


Do You Want To Touch Me?

by PyrrhaIphis



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: (more than) a little crack, Arthur-centric, M/M, Swearing, Tags Are Hard, isolated lead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-11 07:52:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 48,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11710086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyrrhaIphis/pseuds/PyrrhaIphis
Summary: After a demented version of a "meet cute" outside the bar where he met up with Curt Wild, Arthur Stuart finds his world spiraling down into hell.  He loses his job and his apartment, the girl he met on the street pretty much abducts him...and that's only the beginning.  Eventually, all Arthur can do is wonder how in the world his life has taken this bizarre turn.  It's like something in a film.  Unfortunately, the film’s genre quickly went from ‘bad romantic comedy’ to ‘cheap bawdy comedy.’  But until it strays into ‘low budget psychological horror,’ he figures he'll be okay...Really, this is kind of nuts.  I came up with it at the end of NaNoWriMo (first 8k words written during NaNo, in fact) thus it was the product of a fried brain.  (Or a boiled one.  I came up with it while in a bath that was too hot...)Whatever you do, please don't take it seriously.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If there are any inappropriate Americanisms in Arthur's POV/dialog, please let me know so I can fix them!

*****Prologue*****

 

            Eyes shut, Arthur was concentrating on his bath, trying to pretend he was anywhere but here.  In the crummy bath at his little basement flat, back in London with the Flaming Creatures, even his parents’ house in Manchester would be better than here.  The best place would be if this was Curt’s flat, if somehow…

            The door to the bathroom opened, jarring him out of the pleasant daydream that was trying to form.  Arthur hastily grabbed a washcloth and used it to cover his privates.

            “Aww, how cute!” she giggled.  “But you don’t have to be shy around me, darling.  I’ve already seen it all, you know.”

            “And you’re never going to see it again,” Arthur assured her.

            “You really are shy, aren’t you?”  She sat on the toilet and looked at him hungrily, licking her chops like a savage animal.  “Do you plan on getting undressed in the dark after we’re married?”

            “We’re not going to get married!”

            “Of course we are!”  She laughed, and stuck her tongue out at him.  “What else would you be doing living in my daddy’s house?”

            “This isn’t a house.  It’s a prison.”  Or a psych ward.

            “Ooh, role-play!  How kinky!”  What _did_ she think she was on about?  “Okay, if you’re a prisoner, then I’m the warden!”

            “You what?”  Did she really think he was going to play along with this nonsense?

            “The guards tell me you’re planning something,” she said, artificially deepening her voice.  “What is it?”

            “A jail break.”  He’d been planning one for the last month.

            “Impossible!” she bellowed.  “No one breaks out of _my_ prison.”

            “I’ll be provin’ you wrong.”  Arthur was going to see freedom again, no matter the cost.

            “You just go ahead and try.  But remember where you are, Prisoner 24601.  This is the highest security prison in the country, and you’re surrounded by serial killers, kidnappers and rapists.”  More like all of the above, rolled into one deceptive package that was sitting in front of Arthur and leering at him.  “So you should just watch your pretty little face.  And don’t bend over in the shower,” she added, laughing.

            “Oh, I’ll be doin’ nothing _but_ bendin’ over in the shower,” Arthur countered.

            She stared at him in shock.  “Don’t you know what happens to men who bend over in the shower in prison?” she exclaimed, dropping the ‘warden’ voice.

            “Of course.  It’s the best way to enjoy all that naked man.”

            She leapt to her feet and slapped him.  “Even as a joke, don’t say something so disgusting!”

            “I’m not jokin’,” Arthur assured her.

            With a screech, she suddenly applied the full force of her weight to the top of his head, forcing it down under the water.  Shocked, Arthur gasped, and his lungs filled with water.

 

*****Chapter One*****

 

            It began like a bad romantic comedy, with the cliché of the ‘meet cute.’  Only there was nothing ‘cute’ about any of it.

            When Arthur left the bar, one hand tightly clutching the pin Curt had slipped into his bottle of beer, he was so busy looking up and down the street to see if perhaps Curt was lingering somewhere to wait for him that he didn’t look directly in front of him.  That was when he bumped into her.  She appeared to be in her early twenties, and though her face was pretty, there was a look in her eyes that made Arthur cringe.  At the time, he thought it was because she was angry at him for bumping into her and making her spill her coffee all over her designer dress.

            “Look what you’ve done!” she shouted.  Her voice had the faintest trace of a New England accent of the wealthiest sort.  “What if my dress is ruined?!”

            “I’m sorry.  I guess I wasn’t lookin’ where I was goin’.”  Arthur didn’t actually have much experience with enraged women, and wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do in the face of one.  “Er…how much did it cost?  Maybe I could replace it if it’s ruined?” he suggested.

            “This dress cost over a thousand dollars,” she informed him snippily.

            “A thousand…?  ‘Oo the bloody hell would pay so much for a single piece of clothing?!  You could feed a whole town with that!”

            The woman’s eyes widened, and she raised her hand to slap him.

            “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Arthur said instantly.  “It’s not my place to judge you.”  He cleared his throat uncomfortably, even as the woman lowered her hand.  “I can’t pay that kind of money.  But maybe I can at least pay the dry-cleanin’ bill?  It might not be ruined, after all.”

            “Maybe,” she conceded.

            Hoping he had averted the disaster, Arthur fetched out his notebook, and tore out a blank sheet of paper.  “I’ll give you my number so you can tell me how much the dry-cleanin’ is,” he said, writing down his name and telephone number.

            “That’s a funny accent you’ve got there,” the woman said.  “Where are you from?”

            “Manchester,” Arthur sighed.  How many times had people called his accent ‘funny’?  Yes, he didn’t sound like the cast of _Upstairs, Downstairs_.  No, he wasn’t Cockney.  _Why did that make his accent fucking **funny**?_   Perhaps Americans were simply too easily amused…

            “Where’s that?”

            “Northern England,” Arthur told her, handing her the paper.

            “Why did you move here?”

            “To get away from my father.”  Sort of.

            The woman laughed.  “I can understand that,” she agreed, tucking the paper into her tiny purse.  “My father’s _such_ a control freak.  You know, he doesn’t even like me going out alone like this.  Usually demands that someone go with me.  As if I can’t take care of myself!  I’m a grown woman, you know?”

            Arthur nodded, wishing only that she would go away so he could head to the nearest subway station.  Curt might still be there, if the trains were running slowly…

            The woman held out her hand towards him.  “I’m Diane Montenegro,” she said.

            “Monte—like the Senator?!” Arthur exclaimed without thinking about it.

            “Yes, he’s my father.”

            Bloody hell…  “No wonder he doesn’t want you goin’ out alone.  He’s probably afraid you’ll be kidnapped.”  Senator Charles Montenegro,  like all of President Reynolds’ closest political cronies, spouted the ‘America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists’ rhetoric, which would make negotiating with kidnappers almost impossible, if he were to stick to his own political rhetoric.  But, like Reynolds himself, he was likely to say one thing and then do something utterly different.

            Diane let out a groan.  “I can take care of myself, though.  I’d like to see anyone try to kidnap _me_!”

            “Er, yes, you really shouldn’t say things like that,” Arthur sighed.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I’m in a terrible hurry.”  Senator Montenegro was notoriously paranoid.  The man probably had goons secretly tailing his daughter, so being seen talking to her was likely to put him in danger.  Besides, maybe Curt was still in the subway station, waiting for him…

            “You jerk!” Diane shouted after him as Arthur started sprinting towards the station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "all that naked man" is borrowed from a volume of the CLAMP manga "Legal Drug". Though the context was oddly both similar and entirely different there... (It was in volume 3, if that matters.)
> 
> Okay, yeah, it's not that complicated a phrase, but since I was decidedly thinking of that when I wrote it, it seems only right to credit it, y'know?


	2. Chapter 2

            Of course, Curt had _not_ been waiting for him at the station.  Why would he be?  Curt Wild had better things to do than wait around for some anonymous journalist he didn’t even remember having shagged ten years ago.

            So Arthur had returned to his depressing basement flat and glumly written up a puff piece about the Tommy Stone concert.  He hadn’t dared to put in his real opinion of the music; in its place, he had substituted a lengthy description of the stage show.  At every turn, he found himself unconsciously writing in negative comparisons, talking about how much better his theatrics as Brian Slade had been.  Every time Arthur found that slipping into his review, he forced himself to delete it.  He couldn’t tell the truth.  Someone had threatened Lou into dropping the Brian Slade story.  Someone had frightened Mandy Slade into lying about where her ex-husband was now.  Someone had terrified the usually unflappable Curt Wild and forced him to keep quiet.  If he tried to print the truth, that Someone would surely come after him.  Why invite that kind of disaster?

            When Arthur handed in his story, he couldn’t help noticing that Lou looked distracted.  He tried to resume his preparations for the Reynolds story he had originally been assigned to, but was soon called aside by the elderly editor.  “Arthur, did you…did you do something at the concert that I should be aware of?” he asked.

            Arthur’s heart nearly stopped.  Had they hunted him down over that one little question?  Even though he hadn’t given his name?  How could they have found him?  His press pass!  If they’d gotten it from that girl, heard his description from her or the bartender, heard about his unusual accent…  “Like what?” he asked, hoping his voice wasn’t shaking.

            Lou sighed deeply.  “So it’s true, then,” he concluded.

            “What’s true?  What are you talkin’ about?  What’s goin’ on?”

            “I had a complaint from the management company that represents Tommy Stone,” Lou told him.  “Seems you said something to upset him.”

            “But…”  Admittedly, he had.  Upsetting Tommy’s smug peace of mind had been one of the reasons Arthur had said it.  But mostly he had just wanted to prove to himself that he was right.  To prove it to himself, and to prove to Tommy—and his protectors—that his secret was not impregnable, no matter how hard they tried.  “It was just—I didn’t even _say_ anything!  Is it really a crime just to mention the name ‘Brian Slade’ in front of him?!”  It wasn’t as though he had said that Brian and Tommy were one and the same person.  The average person hearing his question would probably have thought that he was accusing Tommy of having had an affair with Brian.  Which, in a demented way, had its own truth to it.  Tommy, after all, was far more narcissistic than Brian ever had been.

            Lou tilted his head to one side with a curious expression on his face.  “What’s Brian Slade got to do with it?” he asked.

            Arthur couldn’t stop himself from laughing.  “They didn’t even tell ya _why_ they wanted the story dropped?”  He shook his head as he kept laughing.  “Insanity.  The world’s goin’ to total insanity…”

            Lou set a hand on his shoulder.  “Arthur, I think you need to rest.  Maybe it’s all getting too much for you.”

            “They’re the same bloody person!” Arthur snapped.  If he was going to lose his job over this, then at least _someone_ needed to hear the truth from him!  “Brian Slade and Tommy Stone—they’re one and the same!”

            The old man’s face looked concerned even as he let go of Arthur.  “You’re having a breakdown,” he said gently.  “Do you have friends or family you can stay with for a while?  Maybe you could go back to England for a visit,” he suggested.

            “I couldn’t afford the ticket, not even if I wanted to go,” Arthur informed him.  All the more so now.  Even if Lou hadn’t said the words yet, it was obvious he was being fired.

            “A driving trip, then,” Lou suggested.  “Just get out of the city for a while, see the country.  It’d do you good.”

            “No car, and no license, either.”

            “Find a friend to travel with.  Or just get on a bus and go.  I think travel is just what you need now.”

            “But…”

            “No, no, I won’t brook arguments.  Go on.”  Lou waved him towards the door.

            Arthur tried to think of some argument that would get past Lou’s determination, something that would let him ‘win,’ or at least keep his job.  But ultimately he couldn’t think of a thing.  If whoever was protecting Tommy Stone could get newspaper stories cancelled and threaten innocent people into lying to cover for him, then they could see to much worse fates than just losing his job.  Really, he ought to be grateful they wanted him away from the _Herald_ and not incarcerated or dead.

            As he went back to his desk to pack up his few things, Arthur tried to focus on that, tried to make himself grateful, but it didn’t work.  How could he be grateful when he was losing his job, his only livelihood?  Life in New York wasn’t cheap…

 

*******

 

            The first thing Arthur had done after being fired was to go to the nearest pub and get drunk.  Not a wise course of action, but he couldn’t help it.  Some part of him kept hoping that Curt would show up, and take him away from the mundane realities of this world, back to that beautiful rooftop, where they could be together and make love and no one else would come near.  Of course, that didn’t happen.

            All that _did_ happen was that Arthur wasted money he really should have been saving for his rent, and woke up the next morning with a horrible, unspeakable headache.

            Once his hangover had cleared up, Arthur got to work on polishing up his résumé, so he could send it out to other papers.  He applied for work at a dozen respectable newspapers.  Not one accepted him, and most didn’t even bother sending his rejection.  After that failed to pan out, he printed out more copies of his résumé and tried all the magazines he could think of that were published in the city, but none of them wanted him, either.  Then he tried applying for work at the tabloids.  But even _they_ wouldn’t take him.  Tommy Stone’s protectors must have informed New York’s entire print industry that he was a threat who must never be given work again.

            His money was, by now, beginning to run dry, as the _Herald_ offered no severance package, so he had only his meagre hours from the few days of the month he had worked before being sacked, and his rent would be due in a week’s time.  So Arthur started applying for work in other industries.  He applied for work as a typist in various clerical offices, as a filing clerk, even as a sales clerk at a bookstore.  All were soundly rejected.  He tried calling his few friends, but most of them were never home when he called, and the few he could reach had no funds to loan him.

            With only two days left to get the money for his rent, Arthur faced the inevitable.  He pawned his television, computer and printer, and when that wasn’t enough to make up the difference, he started selling off everything else he had that might bring in a few dollars.  His record player went, and most of his records, too; the only records he couldn’t bear to part with were the ones by the Flaming Creatures and, of course, all of Curt’s records.  On his last trip to the pawn shop, the clerk offered him fifty dollars for his leather jacket—not pawning it to the shop, but selling it to the clerk for his own use—and Arthur didn’t feel like he could refuse the offer.  He had sold everything else of value that he owned, after all.  Everything, that is, except the pin Curt had given him.  It was too precious to be traded for mere money.

            It still wasn’t enough.  He only had a little over half his rent by the day it was due.  But maybe that would be enough for a little while.  Arthur went to see the landlord, and explained the situation.  “I’m sure I’ll be able to find a new job,” he insisted.  “If you’ll just give me another week to get the rest of the rent…”

            “No dice,” the landlord barked, shaking his head.  “You pay in full on the first of the month, or you get out by nightfall.  Them’s the rules, and you agreed to that when you moved in.  Can’t afford it?  There’s plenty of other saps who can, so get your pasty ass outta my building.”

            Arthur tried to reason with him, but it was like talking to a stone wall.  Eventually, he had no choice.  He went back to his meagre flat, and packed up his clothes into the same ratty suitcase he had brought to London with him ten years ago.

            Leaving the key on the desk inside the room, Arthur walked forever out of the little flat that had been his home for the last three years.

            Not sure where he could go, Arthur headed to a nearby café that had a public telephone just inside the door.  Without a coat, he didn’t want to stand _outside_ to make any calls, after all!  Of course, as he stood at the phone and dialled the number of one of the friends he hadn't been able to reach before, he realised all too late that he should have made his calls _before_ leaving the flat.

            The first number went unanswered, and the second had been disconnected in the short time since he had last tried it.  In fact, he couldn’t reach any of his remaining friends, and was soon reduced to the prospect of calling exes.  Even though he knew it would end in failure, he had no choice but to try.  If he couldn’t find a place to stay until he got a new job…

            Still, Arthur found himself hesitating as he tried to dial the number of his most recent ex-girlfriend.  It went beyond humiliating, and he knew she had a new boyfriend, so it might get ugly.  But what choice did he have?  If he’d known Curt’s number, he would have gladly called it and begged the shelter of Curt’s flat, eagerly promising countless sexual services in exchange.  But he didn’t know Curt’s real number—the one he’d been given while investigating Brian’s current whereabouts had been disconnected within days—and he doubted the operator would provide him the proper number.  There was no choice:  it was call an ex-girlfriend, or give up and face life in the street.

            Halfway into dialling her number, he heard a woman’s voice addressing him.  “What’s with the suitcase?”  Turning to look at the speaker, Arthur found himself looking at Diane Montenegro.  “Aren’t you cold without a coat?  It’s still winter out there.”

            “It’s a long story,” Arthur told her.

            “I’d like to hear it,” Diane insisted, smiling at him warmly.  “Let’s have something to eat, and you can tell me all about it.”

            “I really shouldn’t,” Arthur replied.

            “You can make your call afterwards.  I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer,” Diane added, before taking the phone out of his hand and hanging it up.

            Arthur sighed.  “Fine,” he said, trying not to grimace.  He retrieved his money from the phone’s coin return before following Diane inside the café and sitting down opposite her.  She looked more than a little odd in her fur coat and diamonds in this neighbourhood.  “Are you slummin’?” he asked.  “This doesn’t seem like your kind of place.”

            Diane just laughed.  “So, let’s order, and then you can tell me what’s going on while we’re waiting for our food.”  She signalled to the waitress, and was soon placing an order for food much more posh than anything that café had on offer.  It took them several minutes to come to any understanding.

            By the time the waitress turned to look at Arthur, he was all too painfully aware of the fact that he was desperately hungry.  He’d been cutting back on food to save his money for the rent, after all. “You want your usual?” the waitress asked.

            “Um, no, no thanks,” Arthur said, trying to smile.  “I’ve already eaten.”

            As if he was the comic relief in a bad movie, his stomach growled to prove him wrong, making both the waitress and Diane laugh at him.

            “If you’ve eaten, it wasn’t enough.  A growing boy like you needs your food,” the waitress added, slugging him in the arm in a cheerful manner.

            “I’m quite done growin’, thank you,” Arthur sighed.  The only way he could possibly grow was out, and he would prefer not to get fat.  Which, in his present predicament, was clearly never going to happen.  He might die of starvation, but—no, he’d die of exposure before starvation.

            “Why don’t you want to eat?” Diane asked, peering at him curiously.

            “I…I can’t afford it,” Arthur admitted uncomfortably.

            “Well, that’s no problem, then!  I’ll pay.  You go on and order whatever you want,” Diane insisted.

            “No, I couldn’t ask you to do that,” Arthur insisted.

            “You’re not asking.  I’m offering.  Go ahead and bring his usual,” Diane told the waitress.

            “Sure thing.”  The waitress headed off towards the kitchen.  That gave Arthur an idea.  They knew him at this café.  Maybe they’d give him a job.  Even if it was only washing dishes, that would be _something_.  If he was prompt enough in asking, maybe they’d give him an advance and he could go and get his flat back…

            “So, tell me what’s going on,” Diane said, with an innocent smile.  “What’s with the suitcase?”

            Arthur did his best not to tell her.  She pressed, and he resisted.  But eventually she just pushed too hard, and he told her everything.  Getting fired, losing his flat, being unable to contact anyone who would be willing to help him.  He was utterly alone in the world, even more so than he had been the night he had first arrived in London.  Only this time, he wouldn’t walk into a club and meet the band that would become the best friends he would ever have.  This time, he would wander the cold and heartless streets of New York until he was arrested for vagrancy, died of exposure, or got mugged and killed by someone hoping the contents of his suitcase might have value.

            All because he had to be childish and taunt a rock star.

            What a pointless, pathetic death!

            He was actually crying by the time the waitress came back with the food.  Then _she_ wanted to know what was wrong, too.  At least she was willing to accept the short version, and she promised to have a word with her boss and see if he could offer Arthur a job.  When she came back—before he’d even finished with his food—she glumly reported that the café couldn’t afford to hire anyone else, not even a part-time dish washer.

            Diane patted his hand in a friendly manner.  “It’s okay,” she assured him.  “You can come stay at my place until you find a new job.”

            “I couldn’t do that,” Arthur replied, slightly horrified at the thought that she would make such an offer.  She didn’t know the first thing about him!  For all she could know, he might fill his suitcase with the house’s valuables, murder everyone, and run off into the night!

            “Of _course_ you can,” Diane insisted.  “After all, what else are you going to do?  Walk the streets all night?”

            Walk the streets…?  Well, that was one possibility, wasn’t it?  There were always men desperate for sex.  The idea of selling his body wasn’t an appealing one, but…in the right neighbourhoods, he would probably find a lot of takers, unless men found him less attractive than they used to.  The idea of being arrested for prostitution seemed even worse than the idea of being arrested for vagrancy, however.

            Diane continued to tell Arthur that he simply _must_ come stay with her, but he remained staunch in his refusals.  It wasn’t right.  It would be taking advantage of her generosity.  Not to mention that her father was in Reynolds’ shirt pocket, which might mean that he was among Tommy Stone’s protectors, or at least might inadvertently inform them of where their quarry had ended up.  So despite how tempting her offer seemed, Arthur continued to refuse it.

            Once they were done eating, the waitress cleared away their dishes, and Diane left a hundred dollar bill on the table, to cover both food and tip…despite that Arthur pointed out that it would pay for the meal of everyone currently in the establishment easily.  Diane insisted that she didn’t have any smaller bills, and didn’t want to wait for change.

            Then she picked up Arthur’s suitcase and marched out with it.  He was so stunned that it didn’t even occur to him to trade her hundred dollar bill with a smaller one out of his own stockpile.  He just ran out after her.  He didn’t really care about the clothes, but all his records were in there.  If he was really about to turn into a prostitute, then he was going to lose Curt forever, but he couldn’t bear the idea of losing his music, too.

            By the time Arthur caught up with her, Diane was shoving his suitcase into the boot of a Rolls Royce.  She slammed it closed just before he could snatch his case back—in fact, she nearly caught his fingers with it.  “Come on, then,” Diane said, as she got into the car.

            Though he didn’t much care for the idea, Arthur felt like he had no real choice:  he got into the passenger’s seat and let Diane drive off towards her father’s mansion.


	3. Chapter 3

            The Montenegro mansion was enormous and old; it was rumoured, in fact, to date back to before the American Revolution.  Looking at the place, Arthur was certain it didn’t pre-date Queen Victoria.  But for America that was still quite old.  And it was huge by any nation’s standards.  There had to be at least a dozen bedrooms, if not considerably more.

            Diane drove the car around to the back, coming to a stop in front of a car park not connected to the manor, with enough doors to accommodate at least a dozen cars.  After parking the car, she walked off without opening the trunk.

            “What about my things?” Arthur called after her.

            “Oh, Edwards will get them when he puts the car in the garage,” she assured him.

            So she had servants as well?  No, Arthur shouldn’t have been surprised by that:  with such a huge manse to take care of, how could there _not_ be servants?  Perhaps that was why she had felt so safe inviting him in.  She trusted that the servants would see to it that he didn’t take anything that didn’t belong to him.

            As Arthur followed Diane towards the house, he heard the sound of angry barking.  “Oh dear!” Diane exclaimed.  “The dogs are out!  _Do_ hurry!  They don’t like strangers, you know.”

            Diane set out running for the door.  Arthur didn’t start running after her until he saw the dogs headed his way.  Half a dozen extremely large Rottweilers, snarling and barking and generally giving every indication of being very angry.

            Though he was a fairly quick runner, he still didn’t make the open door to the house before the first of the dogs reached him.  It leapt forwards and buried its teeth in his calf.

            “Let go of him!” Diane shouted, running over and swatting the dog away.  “Bad dog!  Bad!  Go on, get!”

            The dog backed off slightly, but it was still growling and snarling.  Arthur was not convinced that it would resist attacking Diane as well, so he urged her to head inside, even as he started slowly backing towards the door.

            Diane shut the door and locked it as soon as they were both inside.  “Really, what _is_ Father thinking, letting the dogs loose when I’m not at home?!”

            “What does your father keep such vicious dogs for?” Arthur demanded.

            “Well, they’d be pretty terrible guard dogs if they weren’t vicious,” Diane laughed.

            “What—who is this, Miss Diane?” a man’s voice asked.  To Arthur’s great relief, the new arrival had a London accent.  The fellow looked to be about fifty, with a nondescript face.  His general appearance suggested reliability, but that may have been the impact of his suit more than anything else.

            “Oh, Edwards!  You’ll need to go get Arthur’s bag out of the Rolls.  Which rooms are ready?”

            “You didn’t tell me you were expecting company,” Edwards said, his face drawn tight.  Arthur suspected he suffered a lot at the mercy of Diane’s whims.  “And are you aware your guest is bleeding all over the clean floor?”

            “Of course I am!  The stupid dog _bit_ him!  So we’ll need a first aid kit before you get his luggage.”

            “Miss, I think we should call an ambulance, rather than attempt to deal with his injury ourselves.”

            “Oh, piffle!  I can bind up a wound _just fine_.  Now be a good boy and fetch the first aid kit.  Bring it to my bedroom.  Then get one of the guest rooms ready, and bring Arthur’s suitcase up.  Well?  What are you waiting for?  Get to it!”  Diane clapped her hands to dismiss him.  Or to be more irritating.  Or perhaps both.

            Edwards scowled.  “Very well, Miss Diane.”

            As Edwards headed off in one direction, Diane began leading Arthur deeper into the house, pulling on his hand every time he so much as slowed down.  By the time they reached her excessively pink bedroom up on the first floor, Arthur was starting to feel a little dizzy.  Probably the combination of lack of food over the last several days and the blood loss.  Diane continued pulling him forward until he was in her bathroom, which was larger than the flat he had just been evicted from.  Her bathtub was, in fact, larger than his bed had been.

            “Sit down,” she ordered, indicating the fluffy pink seat on the lid of the toilet.  “Oh, and take your pants off.”

            “Not bloody likely!” Arthur snapped, without stopping to think about what she meant when she said ‘pants.’  Of course she meant his trousers, not what was underneath them.  Well, the answer remained the same.

            “How am I supposed to bandage your leg with your pants in the way?” Diane countered, crossing her arms petulantly.

            Arthur sighed, and rolled up the leg of his trousers to allow access to the bleeding wound on his calf.  “This will be fine,” he assured her.

            Diane giggled.  “Are you always so shy?” she asked.

            “Not wantin’ to take my trousers off in front of a girl I barely know is hardly ‘shy’ by any standard definition,” Arthur replied.  “More like common decency.”

            Diane was still in the process of finding his ‘modesty’ ludicrously amusing by the time Edwards arrived with the first aid kit.  Though the man offered to help bind Arthur’s wound, the young woman wouldn’t hear of it, and sent him away to get a room ready.  Despite Arthur’s worries to the contrary, Diane knew what she was doing with the first aid kit.  She applied a disinfectant that stung terribly—she also got quite the laugh out of seeing him wince at the additional pain—and bandaged it up so tightly that it became even more painful.

            Then, ignoring all the pain he was in, Diane insisted on giving him a tour of the mansion, and absolutely wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.  Arthur actually rather enjoyed seeing Senator Montenegro’s collection of art; it was larger than most of the galleries in the city, and contained original works by a great many exceptionally famous artists, including a few Renaissance masters.  However, he was surprised to see that the large painting in the position of prominence at the end of the hall was covered over with a heavy velvet drape.

            “Why’s this one covered?” Arthur asked.  “Protectin’ it from the sunlight?”  If the Senator didn’t feel the urge to protect paintings by Botticelli and Titian, then whose work _did_ he think was worth protecting?

            “Oh, no, that’s not it at all,” Diane said, shaking her head.  “That’s Daddy’s wedding portrait.  He doesn’t like seeing pictures of my mother.  She died giving birth to me, you know.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry,” Arthur said, feeling rather perplexed.  Was Senator Montenegro a widower?  Odd that that had never come up in any of the news stories on him.  Then again, if his wife had been dead that long, perhaps it wasn’t seen as relevant to mention it?

            Diane shrugged with an alarmingly cheerful smile.  “It’s okay; I never knew her.  C’mon, I’ll show you one of Daddy’s collections.”

            “Isn’t _this_ one of his collections?” Arthur asked, even as Diane began to lead him back out of the gallery.

            “Oh, no, these were Mom’s.  Daddy’s never cared for art at all.”

            Arthur tried to puzzle that out as Diane dragged him out of the room.  If Senator Montenegro didn’t like art, why hadn’t he sold his wife’s collection, or donated it to an art museum, instead of curating it so carefully?  And why would he bother covering up her portrait, if he never went into the hall where it was hanging?  Keeping the collection out of fondness for the late wife was perhaps plausible, but hiding the portrait made no sense, no matter how Arthur looked at it.  And why wouldn’t Diane want it uncovered so she could see the face of the mother she had never known?  Something was just _wrong_ with that, he was sure of it.

            “In here, in here!”  Diane’s voice was nearly a squeal of delight.  “Look, this is Daddy’s _favourite_ collection!”

            Arthur looked at the room with growing apprehension and even horror.  It was an armoury.  Every wall was lined with row upon row of guns, and in the centre were freestanding suits of armour, as well as cannons and racks of swords and spears.  “These…these aren’t _real_ , surely…?”

            Diane giggled.  “Of _course_ they’re real, silly!  What would be the value of a fake?  Ooh, look at this one!  It’s one of Daddy’s extra-special favourites!”  She dragged him over to a case that held a Wild West-style pistol.  “Supposedly, this is the gun that shot Jesse James.  Isn’t that cool?”

            “Er, no, that’s rather terrifyin’,” Arthur said, shivering.  The idea of standing in front of an instrument that had actually taken human lives…

            “You’re not one of those types that romanticises bank robbers, are you?” Diane asked, sounding disappointed.

            “No, of course not, but…death is never pleasant.”  And, in all honesty, he had become more than a little uncomfortable at the idea of guns in general ever since the fifth of February, 1974…

            “He’s got Wyatt Earp’s gun, too,” Diane said, pointing at a rifle nearby.  “If that’s better?”

            “If it’s killed people, it’s not something I want to be in the same room with,” Arthur said firmly.  Despite that he knew, realistically, that at least some of those swords and spears and such in museums had also killed people, and much more directly than guns, since the guns themselves would not usually have been in direct physical contact with the dead bodies.  But museums tended to gloss over that sort of thing, rather than dwelling on it with sadistic glee.

            Diane giggled.  “A big guy like you is really a coward?  How cute!”

            “I’m not a coward,” Arthur sighed.  “Being ill at ease with death is only natural.”  He shook his head.  “Look, can I go lie down, please?  I think I’m still bleedin’.”

            Diane knelt down and lifted up his trouser leg to look at his bandage.  “There’s a little more blood than there was, but not much.  You’re fine, you big baby.”

            “Either way, I’ve lost a lot of blood, and I feel like I might pass out.”  He was not exactly used to bleeding heavily, after all.

            “Oh, fine, we’ll go upstairs,” Diane sighed.

            They were on their way back up the massive grand staircase in the entry hall when they met Edwards on his way down.  “I brought the young man’s things to the lavender bedroom, Miss Diane,” he said.

            Lavender?  Arthur wondered if Edwards could tell what Diane seemed to be missing regarding his sexuality…

            “Oh, Edwards, really!  That’s on the other side of the house!” Diane whined.  “It’s much too far from my room!”

            “I think that’s what your father would prefer, Miss.”

            Diane grumbled incessantly as they continued to climb the stairs.  Once they were on the top floor, Arthur started to turn the opposite direction from the one they had take previously to reach Diane’s room.  “No, no, this way!” Diane insisted, tugging on his arm.

            Arthur pointed out that she just said his room was on the opposite side of the house from hers, but that only made her scowl at him peevishly.  “What?” Arthur sighed.  “Now what’s wrong?”  He knew it would be ungrateful, but a large part of him wanted to walk out the front door—even at the risk of being attacked by those bloody dogs again—and just keep on walking until he was miles away.  The only things stopping him were the pain in his leg and the knowledge that he’d be leaving behind his few remaining records, his last connection to his former lovers.

            “It’s not even eight!” Diane said, stamping one foot.  “It’s much too early for you to turn in.  If you want to rest a bit, you can do it in my room, and we can talk while you rest.”

            “But then I’d have to get up and walk the whole length of the house afterwards,” Arthur reminded her.  “Wouldn’t it be simpler if you come with me, if you’re so determined to chat a while?”

            “Are you always so demanding?”

            “That doesn’t seem like any great demand to me.”  Especially considering that she could simply go back to her own room and leave him alone, as he would much prefer.

            With a glum pursing of her lips, Diane started off walking very quickly down the part of the hall they hadn’t traversed before.  Arthur followed her as best he could, but it was difficult, considering the injury to his leg.

            The lavender bedroom was as monochromatic as Diane’s.  Was every bedroom in the house decorated so exclusively in a single colour?  The black one must have been quite dreary if so, and the white one probably looked like a hospital room.  But all that mattered to Arthur, really, was the sight of his suitcase, at the foot of the bed.  The bed itself was also a welcome sight, and he hobbled over to it as quickly as he could.  He was definitely feeling quite weak at this point…

            Once he reached the bed, Arthur sat down, leaning his head back against the headboard, and pulling his feet up onto the bed after him.  Diane screeched at him about bleeding on the coverlet, and about his shoes still being on, but Arthur couldn’t begin to care.  He was finally off his feet at last!  Maybe in the morning, after a good night’s sleep, he’d have some idea how to fix all the problems in his life.

            At least it seemed sure to be a good night’s sleep.  The air in the mansion was quite warm—much warmer than Arthur could afford to keep his flat—and the bed was incredibly soft.  And it didn’t smell like mildew like his flat always had.  Yes, he could certainly understand why people would want to live in huge mansions like this one…

            “You look like you’re getting all comfortable,” Diane giggled.  “Do you want anything?  Should I call Edwards?”

            “I just want to sleep and recover a bit of the blood I’ve lost,” Arthur assured her.  Maybe she’d finally take the hint and go away…

            “Oh, you should have some protein!  Or is it iron?  Hmm…I’ll ask Edwards,” Diane said, then thankfully wandered off.

            Relieved, Arthur slipped down onto the bed properly, shut his eyes, and was soon drifting off to sleep.  Maybe if he was lucky, he’d dream about Curt coming looking for him, wanting Arthur to share his life…

            Arthur was awoken by the sound of bedsprings.  Opening his eyes, he saw that Diane was on the other side of the bed, crawling towards him on her hands and knees.  “What are you doin’?” he asked, trying not to let his voice betray his alarm.  There really was something about this woman that was not normal…

            “Oh, you didn’t have to wake up!” Diane giggled.  “Go on back to sleep.”

            “Er, no, not with you there,” Arthur insisted, moving away and sitting up.  Looking around, he saw a tray on the table beside him, containing a glass of milk and a plate of biscuits of various sorts.

            Diane moved around to sit all too close to him.  “You don’t have to be shy,” she told him, patting his hand.  “My father’s not home.”

            Arthur looked at her, trying to read her face.  Her eyes shone, and her smile was clear and happy.  “Maybe you’re under some misunderstandin’ about what’s goin’ on here?” he suggested.

            “No, I’m not,” Diane insisted, patting his knee.

            Arthur pushed her hand away immediately.  “Yes, you clearly are,” he said.  “I came here because you made off with the case containin’ everything I own in this world, not because I wanted to!  And even if I _had_ wanted to, it wouldn’t have—look, I’m not interested in you, all right?”

            “You mean you have a girlfriend?  But you didn’t say anything about a girlfriend earlier!”

            “No, I don’t have a girlfriend,” Arthur sighed.  “But—”

            “It’s all right, then,” Diane said, with a big smile, once again setting her hand on his knee.

            Arthur grabbed her wrist and forced her hand back onto her own lap.  “I am not interested in you, or any other woman,” he said, in the slowest, most forceful voice he could dredge up.  It wasn’t entirely true, since it implied he was gay rather than bisexual, but it was also largely true, since at the present moment he didn’t want anyone except Curt Wild.

            “Don’t be silly!  You’re too handsome to be gay.”

            “Exactly how do you think _that_ could ever work?” Arthur asked, more appalled than anything else.  In his experience—which was admittedly much lesser than he would like—the more handsome a man was, the more likely he was to be gay.

            “I think if you try me, you’ll agree I’m much better than any man could ever be,” Diane insisted, leaning in towards him slowly.

            “That isn’t the way that—”  Arthur’s objection was cut off as she suddenly pressed her lips up against his and rammed her tongue rudely into his mouth.  After a moment of shock, Arthur shoved her away, pushing her so hard that she ended up on the floor.  “What the bloody hell is the matter with you?!” he shouted.  “You can’t just force yourself on someone like that!”

            “Of course not,” Diane said, as she got up off the floor and dusted herself off.  “A woman can’t force herself on a man.”

            That was decidedly untrue, but under the circumstances Arthur didn’t dare say so, for fear of giving her ideas.  “Just…please, get out and let me sleep.”  Reasoning with her could wait until the morning, when he tried to negotiate his way back out of this hellish manor.

            “How rude you are!” Diane exclaimed, then stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

            Arthur sighed deeply.  “What _have_ I gotten myself into?” he wondered quietly.  It might actually have been better to end up selling his body…

            But surely Senator Montenegro would see reason.  And if he wouldn’t, well, he was a politician.  He’d be too wary of a scandal to allow anything to happen.  He’d have Arthur removed from the grounds as soon as he learnt he was there in the first place.

            Comforted by that thought, Arthur looked over at the tray.  The biscuits looked tasty, and the milk cool and inviting.  After a moment’s reflection, he decided he was more thirsty than hungry, so he picked up the milk and had a swallow.  Ah, it tasted good!  He had drained half the glass before he knew it.

            Even as he thought about setting down the glass and having some of the biscuits, Arthur realised that nothing looked quite right.  The room seemed oddly inconstant.  A bit blurry.

            As the room began to swim around him, Arthur had only time to wonder just what Diane had put in that milk before he lost consciousness.


	4. Chapter 4

            “You like watching me take a leak?”  Curt’s hands tousled Arthur's hair even as he pounced on his body like a lonely cat.  “Or are you just that happy to know my dick’s out where you can get at it?”

            Arthur laughed.  “What do _you_ think?”

            Curt leaned down and kissed him, tongue caressing the roof of his mouth, lips sucking on lips, teeth grazing.  The feeling of their chests pressing together, bare skin against bare skin…

            …faded away.

            Arthur couldn’t feel the worn old mattress beneath his back, or his jeans against his bare buttocks.  He couldn’t feel Curt above him, straddling him, kissing and caressing.

            What he _could_ feel was a feather mattress beneath him, covered in silk sheets, and a warm body right in front of his own naked body.  For a moment, he thought he had just somehow forgotten how he had gotten from the crummy bar after the Stone concert to Curt’s flat.

            Then the body in front of him shifted closer, and he felt breasts touching his chest, and it all came flooding back.

            As he opened his eyes, Arthur saw that he was in Diane’s nauseatingly pink bedroom, and she was lying in the bed with him.  For the moment, she was—mercifully!—asleep.  Now if only he could get out of the room without waking her…

            As slowly and carefully as he could, Arthur began backing away from her.  Before he could reach the edge of the bed, Diane’s eyes opened, and a wide, unsettling grin covered her face.

            “Good morning!” she exclaimed with a cheerfulness that made Arthur’s head hurt.

            “What am I doin’ in here?” Arthur asked, even as he kept trying to escape.

            Diane giggled.  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember our mad passions last night,” she cooed.

            “I remember you drugged me,” Arthur said.  “Beyond that, nothing.  But I think that’s all that matters in the end.”

            “I didn’t drug you, silly!”  Diane moved across the bed with alarming speed, and forced him down onto his back—she was surprisingly strong—so she could lie down above him.  “You came in here all on your own, just _filled_ to bursting with love for me!” she insisted.

            “You know bloody well that didn’t happen.”

            “How else would you have gotten in here?” Diane asked, with a self-satisfied smile.  “Or do you think tiny, petite little me could have carried you all the way here?”

            “I don’t really care how you got me in here,” Arthur countered.  “Maybe you’ve got a hand cart.  All that matters is that I’m not stayin’.”

            “Of course you’re staying,” Diane insisted.  Then she kissed him again, forcing her tongue so far down his throat that it was making him gag.

            Arthur started trying to shove her off, but his limbs felt like lead.  Whatever she had drugged him with, its effects were apparently long-lasting.

            Before he could successfully remove her, Arthur heard the door to her bedroom open.  “Just what is going on in here?!” a man’s voice demanded.  It wasn’t Edwards…

            Diane finally moved off Arthur, and turned to look at the door with a nervous smile.  “Oh, good morning, Daddy,” she said sweetly.

            “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my daughter’s bed?” Senator Montenegro asked, glaring at Arthur as he sat up.

            “Er…tryin’ to get out of it…” Arthur answered, perhaps a bit too honestly.

            “And what were you doing to get you _into_ my daughter’s bed?”

            “Ah…that was…not what it looks like…”

            “Oh, Daddy, stop being such an unreasonable bore!” Diane insisted.  “We’re in love!”

            “What kind of shite are you makin’ up?!” Arthur demanded.  “You drugged me!  I’d be more likely to fall in love with that bloke in your kitchen than with you!”

            Diane laughed.  “See, Daddy?  Doesn’t he have a wonderful sense of humour?”

            Sense of humour?  If telling her flat-out that he would prefer her male servant to her was misinterpreted to be a joke, then how in the world was he to get through to her and make her understand that he didn’t want her?

            Senator Montenegro turned a furious scowl at Arthur.  “You will, of course, make an honest woman of my daughter.”

            “I…what?”  He was _not_ demanding that Arthur marry his daughter, surely.  In this day and age, he couldn’t possibly expect that a woman marry the first man she took to her bed.

            “You are going to marry my daughter,” Senator Montenegro spelt out with painful precision.  “I cannot afford any kind of scandal.”

            “Forcin’ a man to marry a woman against his will is goin’ to cause much more of a scandal than _not_ forcin’ him to marry her,” Arthur tried to point out.

            “The subject is not open to debate,” the Senator said, then left the room, slamming the door behind him.

            Arthur groaned.  How in the world had he gotten into this predicament?  No, it didn’t matter.  A Senator did not have the power to force anyone to marry his daughter.  All Arthur had to do was go back to the room with his things in it, take them, and walk out the front door.  If Montenegro tried anything, he could go public with the truth of what had really happened.  What could be a bigger scandal than trying to cover it up when his daughter drugged—and possibly raped—a man?

            Though he still felt a bit unsteady on his feet, Arthur got out of the bed as quickly as he was able.  Scanning the room, he found his clothes discarded on the floor nearby, and hurried into them.

            “You’re not upset, are you?” Diane asked.

            “What a stupid question!” Arthur snapped.  “Of _course_ I’m upset!  Do you always victimise innocent men when they’re down on their luck?  Is this some kind of game to you?”  She hadn’t exactly protested her father’s decision that she had to marry a man she’d barely even met.

            Diane had a cross expression on her face.  She was sitting up, with her hands on her hips.  The covers lay across her thighs; everything was exposed.  Had she moved the covers after her father left, or…?

            “Not exactly modest, are you?” Arthur asked, grimacing.  “You let your father see you like that?”

            “Why not?” Diane asked, her voice all innocence.

            “There are so many reasons why not that I barely know where to begin,” Arthur replied with a deep sigh.

            “Are you jealous?!” she asked, excitement filling her voice to the point that it seemed to jump up and down with glee.

            “Of course not.  More like disgusted.”

            Without another word, Arthur left the room, and limped his way back towards the room where his belongings were stored.  His calf was hurting rather badly.  Could it be infected?  But she had applied disinfectant…or at least, she had applied something that had stung as though it was disinfectant.  It might have been almost anything…

            Well, no matter.  When he got out, he’d go to a hospital and have them look at it.  Though he wasn’t quite sure how he’d pay for it.

            To Arthur’s horror, his suitcase had gone from the lavender room.  There was no sign of it.  That was it, then.  He suddenly had nothing left but the clothes on his back, and Curt’s pin, still attached to the lapel of his shirt.

            So be it, then.  He’d go out into the world with nothing.  Who could know?  Maybe that was what he needed right now, to be reduced to nothing.

            Arthur hurried down the stairs as quickly as he could, and opened the front door of the house.  He hadn’t taken a single step outside before he heard barking, and saw the dogs running towards the door.  He slammed it shut as fast as he could.

            There had been another door in the kitchen…

            When Arthur got there, he found Edwards making breakfast.

            “Can I help you?” Edwards asked.

            “Er, those dogs aren’t around the back, too, are they?” Arthur asked.

            “Those bloody things are everywhere,” Edwards sighed.  “They can lap this house so fast you’d think they were greyhounds.”  He didn’t seem to be using the same accent as before…

            “Then how does anyone ever _leave_ this house?  The car park’s on the other side of those demonic dogs!”

            Edwards sighed.  “It’s a far sight from easy, let me tell you,” he said.  “But what, exactly, have you done?  The Senator told me not to let you leave the house.”

            “He thinks I’ve slept with his daughter, but I ‘aven’t!”

            “Well, the Senator’s a reasonable man, if old-fashioned.  I’m sure you can explain the situation once he’s calmed down a bit,” Edwards assured him.  “Meanwhile, it’s not a bad cop, living in luxury like this.”

            “Only that woman seems to expect me to be interested in her,” Arthur said, shaking his head.

            “What’s wrong with that?  She’s a pretty young thing, if a bit odd.”

            “She’s not my type.”

            Edwards looked at him with an arched eyebrow, then chuckled.  “Thought as much,” he said.  “I’m pretty good at spotting a pouf.”

            “So…you’re not…?”

            “Certainly not!  My brother back home was, though.  I got good at telling the difference between his friends and his ‘ _friends_ ,’ if you see my meaning,” Edwards said, with a confidential chuckle.

            Arthur frowned, but soon felt an idea brewing.  “I don’t suppose any of the other men employed here are, ah, like me?”  No point in trying to explain that his sexuality was a little more complicated than Edwards seemed to think.

            Edwards laughed.  “Others?  There’s no others.  Just me.”

            “In a house this size?”

            “Aye, in a house this size.  The Senator calls me his butler, but he makes me fill the duties of butler, maid, cook, and valet,” Edwards sighed.  “If my parents could see me now, they’d weep.  Thought I was moving up in the world, I did.  Butler for a wealthy Senator, rather than man-servant for a rich wastrel who spent all his family’s money on cocaine and prostitutes.”

            Before he knew what was happening, Arthur found himself subjected to a half-hour long diatribe on the many and various evils of Edwards’ former employer, the third son of fairly insignificant member of the House of Lords.  The only thing about the speech that was vaguely interesting was the guessing game going on inside Arthur’s head as to just _which_ member of the House of Lords it was, and the fun went out of that by the ten minute mark, when he figured it out.  But he kept on nodding, and offering the appropriate word of sympathy or light chuckle of feigned amusement.  Not out of politeness, but because he hoped to win Edwards over to his side so the man would help him escape, just in case the Senator remained intransigent.

            The only reason Edwards stopped talking was that Diane came into the kitchen.  She was fully dressed in a disquietingly revealing pink _thing_ whose designer seemed to have stopped halfway between shifting it from lingerie to a clubbing getup.  “ _There_ you are!” she exclaimed, grabbing Arthur’s wrist with both her hands.  “I’ve been looking _everywhere_ for you!”  Diane started tugging him back out of the kitchen.  “Come on, I need to finish your tour of the house!”

            “May I suggest that you wait until after you’ve breakfasted, Miss Diane?” Edwards asked, his casual, slightly northern accent dropped for the crisp, standardised London accent he had been using last night.  Well, that was one way around the ‘what a funny accent you have’ reaction:  fake the accent they’re expecting.  Fine and dandy for those who could manage it, but Arthur had never been able to do more than tamp his down a little.

            Diane let out an irritated sigh, but agreed to Edwards’ suggestion, dragging Arthur along after her into the massive dining room that had a table capable of easily seating twelve.  As Diane sat down at one end of the table, Arthur looked around, but saw no sign of the Senator.  “Where does your father usually sit?” he asked.  Better to start trying to get on the man’s good side immediately…

            “Oh, Daddy takes his breakfast in the car on the way to his office.  He won’t be here to bother us,” Diane said, in a happy tone.

            So much for that, then.  Arthur sat down at the far end of the table, to put as much distance between himself and Diane as possible.  Unfortunately, she just got up and marched the length of the table to sit down beside him.  He should have known better than to think that was going to work.  And he wasn’t about to be childish enough to keep shifting his seat in the hopes that she’d stop following him about.  “Do you always get…attached…this quickly?” Arthur asked.

            Diane giggled.  “Of course not.  You’re _special_.”

            Arthur couldn’t stop himself from scowling.  He had been around long enough to know that _no one_ thought there was anything the least bit special about him.  Back in the ‘70s, he had apparently exuded an ‘easy lay’ aura that had made certain types of men very eager to make his acquaintance, but that hardly made him _special_ in any way.  This woman was rich and her father was powerful; if she wanted one, she could easily enough acquire a handsome young actor or an exciting rock star for a boyfriend.  So why take such an interest in an unemployed and suddenly homeless journalist?  It didn’t make any sense…

            He kept trying to make sense of it in his head, working through it as he would a pernicious story with minimal leads, but no explanations were immediately forthcoming.  And as soon as they finished their breakfast, Diane once again insisted on giving him the full tour of the mansion.  This time, he let her.  If it came down to the need to escape in a more traditional sense, it would be best if he knew the layout of the whole place, and all the tools available to him, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I am posting this, I cannot help reflecting on how slow this is to really get going, and I suddenly feel like maybe I needed to rework/tighten it. *sigh* Sorry. I promise it really does pick up and hit its stride eventually. Not for about another four chapters, but...
> 
> (If I ever feel like a challenge, I might go back and try to compress the early chapters to make it more interesting, but I can't guarantee that'll ever happen.)


	5. Chapter 5

            By the time the tour ended, Arthur’s leg was in agony.  He was sure the bite was infected.  Rather than attempt to be stoic and pretend the pain wasn’t there as he might normally do, he played it up, limping much more than necessary.  After about ten minutes of that, Diane finally noticed, and began fussing over him.  Contrary to his expectations, however, she didn’t immediately offer to take him to get medical treatment.  It was only when he started expressing the—slightly ludicrous—fear that the bite had given him rabies and strongly suggesting that he should be to be taken to the hospital that Diane agreed to let him see a doctor.

            Unfortunately, she insisted on calling her father’s personal physician to come look at him without leaving the house.  “Because you need to stay off that leg!”  And yet she tried to get him to climb the stairs and walk all the way down the hall to _her_ bedroom.  Arthur decided it was probably better to stay in the more public areas downstairs, and convinced Diane to let him lie down on the sofa in one of the parlours.

            Of course, there could be nothing so plebeian as a television set in the home of someone as pompous as Senator Montenegro.  Not in a room used for entertaining purposes, at any rate.  So all Arthur could do as he waited for the physician’s arrival was just lie there and wonder how in the world his life had taken this bizarre turn.  It really did strike him as being like something in a film.  Unfortunately, the film’s genre had gone from ‘bad romantic comedy’ to ‘cheap bawdy comedy.’  But as long as it didn’t stray into ‘low budget psychological horror,’ he should be able to find a way out somehow.

            Unfortunately, there was no one to come looking for him.  He had no family, he’d lost his job, he didn’t really have any friends to speak of, and since he had just been evicted, there wasn’t even anyone who could notice that he wasn’t coming home.  If he simply disappeared, never to be seen again, no one would notice or care.

            It was the fact that no one would _care_ that really upset him, but he knew it was true.

            He had vanished before, and not a single soul had ever looked for him.  Had his parents ever reported him as a runaway?  Of course not.  His father had probably been thrilled to be rid of him.  When he couldn’t handle seeing the Flaming Creatures screaming at each other in the band’s final weeks and had run off to hide, not returning to the flat until days had elapsed, had any of them gone looking for him?  They not only hadn’t looked; they hadn’t even noticed his absence.

            That had been when he had decided to live on his own.  If no one needed—or even wanted—him around, then why should he allow himself to get all wrapped up in the lives of those other people who didn’t have a care for _his_ life?  Ultimately, that had been why he had moved to New York:  it had _forced_ him to live unaided, as there was no way to call Ray or Malcolm and beg a few quid if he was short a bit on his rent.  It had been the only way he could feel sure that he really would grow up and live life on his own.

            Unfortunately, it turned out to have the serious drawback that with no family, friends or flatmates, there was no one who even _could_ notice he was gone.

            There was _one_ person Arthur desperately wanted to notice he was missing, but how could he?  It didn’t matter if Curt remembered him only from the night of the Stone concert, and didn’t remember their encounter ten years earlier, so long as he wanted to see Arthur again, that would be enough.  At the time, Arthur had flattered himself that he did want to:  why else would he have given him that pin?  He had even said “see you around,” as he was leaving, with an awkward little smile on his face, implying that he wanted that outcome.  He might only have said it to be polite, of course.  But even if he really did want to see Arthur again, they didn’t travel in the same circles, and there was no location common to the both of them, where they might ordinarily expect to see each other, so Curt had no way of realising that Arthur had gone missing.  Even in the unlikely event that Curt tried to get in touch with him through the _Herald_ , he’d be informed that Arthur had been fired, and that would be that.  They’d never hand out his home address, after all.  And even if they did, that, too, would be a dead end when the landlord reported that Arthur didn’t live there anymore.

            The more Arthur thought about the impossibility of anyone on the outside coming looking for him, the more his current predicament began to feel less like offensive comic relief—the clueless, stereotyped gay man, unaware of the pretty girl trying to bed him—and more like that of a victim-to-be—like Janet Leigh in _Psycho_ , or one of the hopeless blokes poisoned to death by the seemingly harmless elderly ladies in _Arsenic and Old Lace_.

            No matter what, he did _not_ want that to be his fate.

            He was going to escape, no matter what it took.

            Not long after he came to that very firm decision, Senator Montenegro’s personal doctor arrived.  Arthur could hear Edwards opening the door to let the man in, but Diane intercepted them before they could reach the parlour where he was resting.

            “Who is the patient, exactly?” the doctor’s voice asked.  It was a very sombre, no-nonsense kind of voice.  Like an American version of Arthur’s father.

            “My fiancé,” Diane told him.  How could she have accepted something so absurd that quickly?!  “One of Daddy’s dogs bit him last night, and now his leg’s all swollen up and puffy and he thinks he’s got rabies!”

            “Was the dog foaming at the mouth?”

            “I don’t think so,” Diane was saying, as they entered the parlour.  Arthur shut his eyes, deciding it would be best to feign sleep.  Just in case.  “But it was ever so vicious!”

            “Guard dogs are trained to be vicious,” the doctor chuckled.  “I’m sure the Senator would have noticed if one of his dogs had gone rabid.  However, I’ll leave you with a list of symptoms; let me know if he starts exhibiting any of them.”

            “Thank you, Dr. Weissman.”

            Suddenly, Arthur felt a small hand on his shoulder, shaking him.  He opened his eyes, ignoring Diane, and looked at the doctor.  He looked every bit as grim as he sounded, though he was a bit swarthier than his Germanic name would have led Arthur to expect.  “Er…hi…” Arthur said, trying to smile.  How was he supposed to let the man know that he was being held here against his will?

            “Arthur, darling, take your pants off so Dr. Weissman can look at your leg,” Diane said.

            “I’ll not take my trousers off with you in here,” he told her.

            “Oh, don’t be so silly!  What could you have to be ashamed of?”

            “I’m not ashamed.”

            “You’re embarrassed?  Why, that’s even sillier!” Diane exclaimed, with a giggle.  “I _am_ your fiancée, you know.”

            “You’re not.”

            “Is there a reason you’re wasting my time on this?” Dr. Weissman asked, his voice every bit as irritated as his expression.  “I do charge by the hour, you know.”

            “I’m so terribly sorry, Dr. Weissman!  Arthur, just take your pants off!” Diane screeched.

            Arthur grimaced, shook his head, and then rolled his trouser leg up to reveal the wound.  “This should do,” he said, trying his best not to grit his teeth together with every consonant.

            “Put your foot up on the table here,” Dr. Weissman said, pointing at the coffee table in the centre of the room.  As Arthur did so, the doctor sat down in a nearby chair, and peered at the wound.  “No, this is no good,” he announced.  “We need an examining table, or at least a bed.”

            “Oh, but Arthur said the stairs were too hard for him!” Diane objected.

            “The kitchen table will do,” Dr. Weissman said, with a shrug.

            Arthur sighed, and agreed to hobble his way into the kitchen for the examination.  Anything would be better than finding himself back on Diane’s bed.  Edwards was surprised to see them there, and winced when their purpose was explained.  True to his profession’s stoic nature, he didn’t make any objections.  He just cleared away the things off the table, and then covered it with a table linen, which he said was in need of a wash anyway.

            Though most of the limping had been exaggerated for effect, Arthur genuinely needed assistance getting up to sit on the table.  Once he was there, Dr. Weissman began removing his bandages without a word of warning, ripping away hairs with reckless cruelty.  Arthur did his best not to cry out, but it was more difficult than he was expecting.

            After Dr. Weissman had been peering at the wound for some time, Diane began to pester him.  “Is he going to be all right?  It’s not rabies, is it?  He hasn’t got gangrene, has he?”  The doctor ignored her steadfastly.

            From what little Arthur could see of the tooth marks in his calf, the wound decidedly looked infected.  The lips of the wounds were puckered out, and the flesh immediately at the wound was white, while the tissue surrounding the white area was bright red.

            “There does seem to be a minor infection,” Dr. Weissman eventually announced, “but it doesn’t seem to be anything serious.”  He opened his bag and began to pull out bandages, swabs and an ominous-looking bottle.  “I’ll put on some disinfectant, and send over some antibiotics, just in case.”

            The disinfectant that Dr. Weissman used stung even more than Diane’s the night before had.  His binding on the wound was much less painful, though.  Once that was done, the doctor put his supplies away without a word, and looked at Diane.

            “He needs to stay off that leg as much as possible until it heals,” he announced.  “Complete bed rest.”

            “Okay,” Diane said with a giddy smile.  No doubt she was planning on making him rest in _her_ bed.  “Edwards, show Dr. Weissman back out,” she added, looking at the butler.

            “Miss Diane, if I might be so bold as to suggest it, I think it might be better if you showed the doctor out, so that I might assist this lad in getting down off my table, and up to a bedroom.  Should he stumble, it would be most unseemly for the lady of the house to attempt supporting his weight when someone like myself is about, and could do it for her,” Edwards told her, with the polite, expressionless face that his profession demanded in the situation.

            “Oh…but…he could just wait in here until you’re done showing the doctor out, and then we could take him upstairs together,” Diane countered.

            “Let the man do it for you,” Dr. Weissman told her.  “Strength might be required.  And hanky-panky won’t be good for his rest.”

            “ _That_ wasn’t going to happen no matter what,” Arthur growled.  He’d be more likely to get up to ‘hanky-panky’ with Edwards!

            “Really?  Not even a little cootchy-coo?” Diane asked, her eyes brimming tears.  Arthur didn’t even want to know what she meant by that.  It sounded nauseating.

            “Let the boy rest,” the doctor insisted.

            Glumly, Diane led the way back out of the kitchen.  Arthur took the opportunity to right the leg of his trousers before beginning the painful task of getting back down off the table.  Edwards helped him down, then let go of his arm.

            “Do you actually need help?” Edwards asked.

            “Hopefully not,” Arthur said, with a weak smile, “but you’d better come with me all the same.  If she finds me alone…”  He shuddered at the thought.  “I really appreciate your help back there, by the by.”

            Edwards chuckled.  “The Senator doesn’t pay me enough to buy proper loyalty,” he said.  “I’m rather glad of the chance to foil that spoiled chippie’s happiness.  Within reason, of course.”

            Arthur couldn’t stop his eyebrows from raising a bit.  If applying a word like that to his employer’s daughter was ‘within reason,’ he had to wonder what _wasn’t_.  As they made their way up to the first floor, he came to the literally painful realisation that disobeying a direct order from said employer would be what Edwards was ruling out.  And at present that employer had ordered that Arthur wasn’t to leave the house…


	6. Chapter 6

            After Edwards deposited him back in the lavender room, Arthur locked the door and limped off to bed.  Though he felt a little awkward about it, he climbed under the sheets fully clad, only taking off his shoes and Curt’s pin, which he stashed in the drawer of the bedside table.  Within minutes of lying down, he was slipping off into an uneasy sleep filled with dreams of Curt abandoning him over and over again, often forcibly tearing the pin off his clothes while declaring that he wasn’t worthy of wearing it, and always insisting that Arthur was mad if he thought Curt could ever find him even the slightest bit attractive.

            While he was glad to be woken from such a miserable sleep, the method of his rousing was actually worse than remaining asleep had been:  it was the creaking of bedsprings as Diane climbed into the bed with him.  Arthur jolted so far backwards that he actually tumbled out of the bed, despite how large it was.

            “Goodness, are you all right?” Diane asked, peeking down at him over the edge of the bed.

            “What the bloody hell are you doin’ in here?” Arthur demanded, making the woman giggle obnoxiously.  Why did she spend so much of her time _giggling_?  It wasn’t appropriate for a woman her age.  “The doctor told you no messin’ around with me,” he reminded her.

            “But there’s no reason we can’t cuddle,” Diane insisted.

            “There absolutely _is_ a reason.”  That reason, of course, being that Arthur rather wanted to throttle her, but he really didn’t want to be executed for murder.

            But Diane smiled shyly.  “Oh, of course, how thoughtless of me!  Men are _so_ passionate, after all!”  She got out of the bed again, and headed to the door.  “I’ll be just down the hall in my own room, dearest.  If you need anything, ring the bell for Edwards.  Oh, and I’ll have him bring you a pair of Daddy’s PJs so you won’t be sleeping in your clothes!”

            Uncomfortably, Arthur got up off the floor and crawled back into the bed.  It was the softest bed he’d ever slept in, but the circumstances couldn’t be worse for enjoying luxury.  Initially, he had been acting on the assumption that Diane was just messing around, but now he was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t a bit unhinged.  If she was, then the fact that he had allowed himself to be suckered into her trap like this made his own sanity seem questionable.  But what most worried him was how many people were simply overlooking his situation.  He was still unsure about whether Senator Montenegro was as cracked as his daughter was acting, or if he genuinely misunderstood the situation and simply had the most old-fashioned set of values of anyone Arthur had ever met, though the command to his butler to keep Arthur from leaving the building was certainly rather suspicious.  It was hard to completely blame Edwards for his role, considering he was obeying the orders of his employer, but to obey such a morally reprehensible order was itself rather indefensible.  Dr. Weissman was the one he understood the least, though.  Why hadn’t he picked up on Arthur’s refusal to have anything to do with Diane?  He should have been able to see that Arthur was being forced into the so-called engagement, even if he couldn’t tell that Arthur was a prisoner of sorts.

            Unless he was purposefully overlooking Arthur’s predicament…

            Arthur continued to worry over his situation until interrupted by a knock on the door.  “May I come in, sir?” Edwards’ voice asked from the other side.

            “Of course,” Arthur told him.  It was only Diane he wanted to keep out.  Once the door was opened and Edwards started coming in, carrying a tray with a covered dish as well as some clothes slung over his arm, Arthur shook his head.  “You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ you know,” he said.

            Edwards gave him a wry smile.  “Much as I’d like to be casual, if the young lady or the Senator should hear me, I’d be like to get my notice.  And I’d rather intended this to be my ‘to the grave’ job, if you see what I mean.”

            Arthur nodded.  “I understand, but it’s a bit…just not the sort of thing I’m used to.”  Usually, anyone who discovered he was bisexual—or came to the more usual conclusion that he was gay—started treating him like a joke, or like something that crawled out of a sewer.

            Edwards chuckled as he set down the tray on a nearby table.  “Come from a poor background, do you?” he asked, as he went to shut the door again.

            “No, but…I’ve been rather poor since I cut ties with my family,” Arthur admitted.  “Why are you shuttin’ the door?”

            “Miss Diane wanted me to take the clothes you’re currently wearing to be washed,” Edwards told him.  “Or possibly to be burnt.  She doesn’t seem to think much of your fashion sense.”

            “Please don’t let her destroy my clothes,” Arthur said.  “Wait, is that what happened to my suitcase?!  She didn’t burn my things, did she?!”

            “I’m not aware of what happened to it.  Was there anything within of value?”

            “All that’s left of my record collection, and a framed newspaper story.”  Even Arthur had to admit that his clothes weren’t of any value.  They just served the important functions of keeping him from freezing or being arrested for indecent exposure.

            “That doesn’t sound terribly important,” Edwards commented.

            “The story was the first one ever to bear my by-line,” Arthur explained.  “And the records…well…I…”  He bit his lip.  “Let’s just say I know the singers personally.”  There was something much too embarrassing about admitting that he’d had sex with them.

            From the way Edwards’ eyebrows went up, he probably guessed the sexual detail Arthur had left out.  “I’ll see if I can find out where they are, then.  But I wouldn’t count on getting your clothing back.”

            “What am I supposed to wear if she destroys all my clothes?  I can’t walk about with no kit on.”

            “She had me call a tailor to come in tomorrow,” Edwards said, with a small laugh.  “If you get nothing else out of this, at least you’ll have a nice new wardrobe.”

            Arthur sighed.  “What good would that be with no job and nowhere to live?”

            “Are you in some difficulty?”

            “Apart from being held captive by a demented woman who thinks I’ll be marryin’ her?”

            “She’s merely…overenthusiastic,” Edwards insisted.  “I’ve yet to see any sign of dementia in her behaviour.”

            Arthur shuddered.  “If that’s mere enthusiasm…”  He couldn’t even finish the thought.  The horror of it was too much.  Why was everyone around her defending Diane’s behaviour?  Maybe the assumption that she was mental was taking things too far, but the fact remained that she absolutely should not have been on the streets interfering with the lives of normal people.  But perhaps that was the real reason her father didn’t like letting her go out on her own…?

          Edwards just looked at him for several seconds, then sighed.  “If you could please change your clothes now?  I’ve far too many tasks to do about the house to wait here indefinitely.”

            “Oh, sorry.”  Arthur got out of bed, and quickly shrugged out of his clothes—which were, admittedly, beginning to feel a bit ripe, considering they were on their second day of use—in order to put on the borrowed pyjamas.  As he changed, Arthur became aware that Edwards was watching him studiously.  “Uh…can I help you with something?” he asked.  Edwards was, after all, not really his type…

            “Sorry, just curious,” Edwards chuckled.  “The Senator detests tattoos.  Thought that might make for an interesting quarrel if you had some, but I don’t see any.”

            “Er, no, none to speak of.”  There _was_ a very small one very high towards the back of his inner thigh, but Arthur didn’t like to think about that.  The Creatures had repeatedly insisted that he had been conscious and had asked for the tattoo, but he was fairly sure he’d been completely passed out at the time.  And given its location, he’d never had a particularly good view of it to see quite what it depicted.  Which was, really, all the better.

            Edwards raised an eyebrow at the answer, but didn’t ask any further questions.

            By the time he was done changing, Arthur was very ready to get back off his injured leg, and crawled gratefully back into the bed.  Only then did Edwards bring the tray over to the bed.  The tray had fold-out legs, which Edwards used to balance it above Arthur’s lap.  Removing the lid, he revealed a nice luncheon that smelled quite wonderful.  “I’ll return for your dishes in half an hour, shall I?”

            “I’m sure that’s plenty of time for me to finish eating,” Arthur agreed.  “Cheers.”

            “You’re quite welcome, sir.”  Edwards sighed.  “First time anyone in this benighted house has ever thanked me for anything,” he muttered to himself as he headed towards the door.

            The food was quite as tasty as it smelled, and one of the best meals Arthur had had in years.  When Edwards returned for the dishes, Arthur asked if there was a television hidden in the room somewhere.  There was not.  And all Arthur’s remaining books had disappeared with his luggage, so he had nothing to read.  But there was no point in burdening Edwards any further, so Arthur didn’t ask him to bring anything, and just watched patiently as the poor man left with the tray of empty dishes.

            Once the door was shut, Arthur hopped out of bed—which he immediately regretted, as the landing had been rather painful—and limped over to the door.  He locked it, and then jammed it shut with a chair.  Diane was surely not as strong as Arthur’s father, so there was little fear of her getting in _now_.

            Then he searched the room carefully.  In one of the otherwise empty drawers of the dresser he found a small stash of gratingly sleazy romance novels, and he found a clock/radio in the drawer of the bedside table.

            He wasn’t quite bored or desperate enough to read the romance novels, but Arthur gladly set up the radio and turned it on, tuning it to his favourite station.  They usually played at least one of Curt’s songs a day, and _never_ played any Tommy Stone.


	7. Chapter 7

            By the time Arthur had been in the Montenegro household for a week, his leg was well and truly healed, and he could no longer use it as a proper excuse to hide from Diane.  Not that he had spent the whole week simply hiding, of course.  With dinner on that first day, he had asked Edwards to bring him a pad of paper and some pencils, so he could write to stave off boredom during his convalescence.

            With those tools in hand, Arthur had started out by drawing up a plan of the manor, adding in as much detail as he could remember from his tour.  Every convenient entrance and exit was marked, as well as all rooms containing anything useful for escape, or anything that might be used to stop him.  He didn’t know what was on the second storey, though.  Perhaps there might be something useful there.  But he didn’t count on that as he started sketching out possible escape routes, and writing up tentative plans for methods of putting them into practice.

            Of course, he still hoped that he wouldn’t _need_ to escape.  It was always possible that Senator Montenegro might be prevailed upon to see reason.  Surely the man couldn’t have won so many consecutive terms in the US Senate if he was barking mad.  And perhaps Diane was merely having a joke with him, and had no intention of forcibly marrying Arthur.  But every time she forced her way into his room—usually in company with one of his meals, or following Edwards in when he went for the empty dishes—Arthur became more and more convinced that Diane was utterly around the bend.

            There had been two major exceptions to the routine of the past week.  The first had been the visit of the tailor, and the second had been the arrival of his new clothes.  They were dreadfully dull—dress shirts, finely pressed slacks, silk ties, all in colours even more lifeless than what Arthur usually wore these days—but they were also quite well made and terribly expensive.  They were absolutely not something Arthur would ever choose to wear, though, and he felt quite unnatural as he got dressed for breakfast.

            To his dismay, as soon as he entered the dining room, Diane launched herself upon him.  “You look gorgeous!” she exclaimed.  “But Daddy would complain that you’re not wearing a tie.”

            “I’m not wearin’ a tie without a reason to do so,” Arthur said.  He’d almost never worn one, after all.  The _Herald_ hadn’t been such a formal work environment as to require one.

            “Oh, but they’ll look _so_ nice on,” Diane insisted.  “I picked out all the colours myself to be just _perfect_ for you.”

            Arthur didn’t even bother to reply.  What was there to say?  He just sat down at the table to wait for breakfast to be brought out.  Diane giggled, and sat down all too close beside him.

            “So, what do you want to do today?” she asked.

            “What’s on the second storey?” he asked.

            Diane looked at him with wide, confused eyes.  “Um…the bedrooms?”

            Arthur grimaced.  “The third floor,” he clarified.  Normally, he didn’t forget the American numbering system when talking to Americans.  Maybe this place was getting to him already.

            “What?  Why—why would you ask that?”  An interesting reaction.  She almost sounded frightened.

            “You didn’t show me that on the tour earlier, so I was curious,” Arthur told her, trying to smile in an innocent fashion.

            “Well, it’s…it’s things like Edwards’ living quarters and…and Daddy’s game room.  Stuff not appropriate for genteel society to see.”

            “How’s his ‘game room’ not for fit ‘genteel society’?” Arthur asked.  “Poker tables and decks of cards with naughty pictures?” he suggested with a laugh.

            “Of course not!” Diane exclaimed, flushing red.  “It’s things like a pool table, you know?  Terribly rude and low class.”

            “Lots of gentlemen play billiards,” Arthur said, shaking his head.  “A billiard room is standard in an English manor house.”

            Diane stared at him in surprise.  “Really?”

            Arthur nodded.

            “Have you been to many fine manors in England?”

            “Well, no, none.”

            “Then you don’t know that they play pool, do you?” Diane retorted, sounding annoyed.

            “Billiards and pool aren’t the same thing,” Arthur sighed.  “And yes, I _do_ really know that they play billiards.”

            Diane shrugged.  “Anyway, I don’t want to show you the third floor,” she insisted firmly.

            “All right,” Arthur agreed.  Pushing right away would only make the situation worse.  “What about the rest of the second floor?  Are all the other rooms the same?  Just a rainbow of different colours?”

            Diane nodded.  “Yes, the bedrooms are all laid out identically, except for Daddy’s room.  It’s the red room, of course, and it’s _much_ bigger and nicer.  Well, it used to be Mom’s room, too, after all.”

            “And it’s nothing but bedrooms up there?”

            “No, there’s also the TV room, of course.  And the racquetball court.”

            “Racquetball court,” Arthur repeated, his voice somewhat flattened by his disgust.

            “Well, we _used_ to have tennis courts out behind the garage, but since Daddy got those vicious dogs it’s not safe anymore.  So Daddy built a racquetball court for me.  Wasn’t that sweet of him?”

            “What made him decide to keep a pack of vicious hellhounds?”

            Diane giggled.  “They’re not _that_ bad.”

            “My leg would argue otherwise.”

            “Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

            “It’s already better.  But answer the question,” Arthur insisted.  “What made him decide he needed such bloodthirsty animals to protect his home?”

            Diane shrugged.  “He’s had them for…gosh, I don’t know.  Ten years maybe?”

            Arthur didn’t know Senator Montenegro’s career history well enough to know if anything had happened to him ten years ago—Arthur’s thoughts regarding 1974 had trouble moving past everything that had happened in his own life that year—but he _did_ know that Montenegro had already been in the Senate when Richard Nixon was first elected into the White House, so the decision to increase security around his home clearly had nothing to do with his becoming a Senator.  But even if Diane really was insane, she wasn’t old enough to have lost her mind _that_ long ago, so the dogs probably hadn’t been acquired purposefully to keep her contained.  Besides, if that was their purpose, they were shite at their job…

            “Ooh, would you like to play racquetball with me?” Diane asked eagerly, completely ignoring the subject at hand.

            “I don’t think that would be a good idea, no,” Arthur said.  “Don’t want to push it and re-injure my leg when it’s only just finished healing.”

            Diane sighed.  “No, I guess not.”

            “I’d like the chance to watch some telly, though.”

            “If you say you want to watch football, I’m gonna kill you,” Diane informed him.

            “I do enjoy a good football match, but I’ve yet to see an American station broadcast one,” Arthur chuckled.

            Diane just looked at him in confusion.

            Arthur sighed.  “What we call ‘football,’ you call ‘soccer,’” he explained.  “Because for some reason you use the name ‘football’ for a game primarily played with the hands.  Unless Americans consider themselves quadrupeds?”

            “Oh, soccer’s not nearly as bad as football,” Diane said, after a moment’s contemplation.  “But sports in general are terribly dull to watch.  I won’t let you watch any sports when we’re married.”

            “I’m not going to marry you.”

            “Of course you are, silly!

            How was Arthur supposed to respond to that?  Was there any point in repeating for the hundredth time that she was balmy if she thought she—or her father—could force him into a marriage he didn’t want?  He was still contemplating his options when Edwards brought in the breakfast, which proved tasty as always.  At this rate, Arthur ran the risk of growing fat as well as losing his marbles.

            After they had finished eating, Diane led Arthur up to the first storey, to the television room.  It was evidently decorated in the 1960s, with an excessive fondness for the vanished 1940s.  Most of it seemed harmless, except the gun in the glass display case on the fireplace mantle.  Arthur couldn’t help walking over to look at it with a morbid curiosity.

            “Do you like it?” Diane asked, her voice filled with a burble that Arthur couldn’t interpret.

            “I was just wonderin’ why it’s up here instead of down in the armoury with the rest of the guns,” Arthur explained.  “Surely your father isn’t expectin’ burglars to break in here past those dogs.”

            “Oh, Daddy likes to keep it close by, you know?  He used it to shoot Commies in Korea.”

            “Ah…uh…”  Arthur uncomfortably moved away from the fireplace.  Why would anyone so proudly display a weapon that they, personally, had used to kill people?  Once again, he was at a horrified loss for words.

            Wandering over to the centre of the room, Arthur realised that the layout seemed quite odd.  The telly was on the opposite side of the room from the fireplace, with a sofa facing the telly and two armchairs facing the fireplace, a small table between them.  The pathway from the door into the room led between the sofa and the chairs to a wall of bay windows with closed curtains of a very heavy material.  Moving aside the curtains, Arthur found that the windows opened out directly onto the roof of the porch over the front door.

            Instinctively, Arthur started looking for a way to open the windows.  “Don’t these open at all?” he asked, more to himself than to Diane.

            “Oh, no!” Diane exclaimed.  “It’d be such an easy way for murderers to get in and kill us all!”

            Arthur turned to look at her in disbelief.  “Why would anyone go to all that trouble?  Just gettin’ past the dogs would deter any regular intruder.”

            “Oh, but assassins come after Daddy and me all the time!” Diane insisted.  “It’s important for us to have all possible protection!”

            Arthur raised an eyebrow, then shook his head with a small smile.  That was an impressive level of paranoia!  Though the question was if the paranoia was exclusively Diane’s, or if it was the Senator’s, or perhaps both.  Either way, it might make explaining—and escaping—more difficult, unless he could learn the right secret to exploit that paranoia properly…

            “What are they after?” Arthur asked.  “When they want to kill you?”

            “Oh, it’s because Daddy’s an important Senator, of course,” Diane said.  “He’s one of the President’s chief advisors.”

            “That’s true, he is,” Arthur agreed.  That was, in fact, one of the greatest mysteries about Senator Montenegro:  despite expectations to the contrary, Reynolds hadn’t even offered Montenegro a Cabinet position, and yet he still routinely asked Montenegro to the White House to confer with him, and asked Montenegro to stand on some of the most important Congressional Committees…including the Committee for Cultural Renewal…  “Does your father ever bring you along with him to Washington?”

            “Oh, Heavens, no!  Daddy says it’s _ever_ so dangerous there,” Diane replied.  “Full of Black Panthers and hippies who want to eliminate our way of life!”

            Black Panthers?  Arthur hadn’t heard anything about that group since the ‘70s.  And hippies were even more out of date than that…not to mention not exactly associated with assassination attempts, or anything else more dangerous than a few illegal narcotics.

            After thinking a few minutes, Arthur sat down on one of the arm chairs, and smiled at Diane pleasantly.  “Tell me, is your father home now?”

            “No, he’s in Washington, like usual,” Diane told him, sitting down on the arm of his chair.  “We have the house _allllll_ to ourselves,” she cooed, leaning in towards him.

            “Don’t forget about Edwards,” Arthur said, slipping back out of the chair again.  The woman really was relentless…

            “Oh, he’s just the help,” Diane giggled, following him towards the television.  “He wouldn’t disturb us.”

            Wouldn’t be very helpful of him to _allow_ her to continue her molestations, but Arthur supposed she might be right.  Her father was paying Edwards’ salary, after all.  “Unless your father’s given him instructions to the contrary,” Arthur replied, “which I’m sure he has.”

            “Ooh, I just bet he did!” Diane exclaimed, balling up her fists.  “Daddy’s always been such a killjoy!”  She stamped her foot in irritation.  “Do you know, he once tried to stop me from seeing a really handsome boy just because he came from the wrong side of the bay?”

            “No, I can’t say I knew that.”  Arthur wasn’t sure it made much sense, either.  “If he’s so possessive, he must not have liked sending you off to university.”  Between her somewhat unhinged mental state, Arthur doubted she had even attended university…

            “No, he didn’t mind that,” Diane said with a laugh.  “Of course, he did send me to Wellesley.  No boys.”

            “Ah.”  Given her age, she couldn’t have been too long out of university.  If she had, indeed, graduated university, then perhaps she had been accompanied by bodyguards the whole time, leaving her without any chances to socialise with her peers.  Did that mean she was merely flighty and socially abnormal?  It seemed inconceivable, and yet…well, he’d just have to find some proof, either way.

            Deciding it might be instructive to see what kind of movies the Montenegros kept on tape, Arthur glanced around, looking for their video cassette library.  Given their extreme wealth, he was sure they’d have an extensive collection, but he couldn’t see any.  For that matter, he didn’t even see a VCR.  “Where do you keep your VCR and tapes?” he asked, turning his attention back to the telly itself, an old one that brought up unpleasant memories of his parents’ living room.

            “Oh, Daddy doesn’t approve of those,” Diane told him.  “He says they encourage idolatry.”

            “Eh?  How…?”  Arthur was completely flummoxed by the very idea.  He shook his head.  “Never mind.  Doesn’t matter.  I don’t need to watch the telly anyway.  But how about a stereo?  I had some records in my suitcase…”

            “Oh, no!  Daddy won’t allow any of that!  Except maybe if it’s classical.”

            “Uh, no, it’s rock.”  How could it be anything else?  Even for someone of Senator Montenegro’s age, it was unusual for a man to listen exclusively to classical music.

            “Then you can’t have it here,” Diane told him sternly.  “Daddy says rock music is the Devil clearing his throat.”

            Arthur frowned.  He knew Senator Montenegro was extremely conservative, but he hadn’t realized the man was _that_ much of a reactionary.  It didn’t even make sense.  The man was a supervisor of the Committee for Cultural Renewal, one of the greatest promoters of Tommy Stone’s career.  And while his new music was shite compared to what he used to produce as Brian Slade, it was most certainly still rock.

            “Why is he so dead set against it?” Arthur asked.

            “I don’t know,” Diane said, shrugging.  “I think it has something to do with Mom.”

            Arthur chuckled.  “Maybe she was an Elvis fan to the point that it made him jealous,” he suggested.

            “Maybe,” Diane laughed.  “He _is_ the jealous type.”

            How would Diane know if her father had jealous tendencies if her mother died in childbirth?  One more thing that didn’t quite add up…


	8. Chapter 8

            Arthur had spent the last two days in the Senator’s library, trying to get a sense of the man by the books he kept.  The large collection of works on military history were hardly surprising, nor were the copies of various books on economic theory.  The very well-thumbed copy of Machiavelli’s _The Prince_ was alarming, but not terribly surprising.  The large number of books on psychology and mental health, though…

            The whole time he’d been in the library these past two days, Diane had sat in the room with him, using coloured pencils to sketch things in a notebook, every so often calling him over to look at what she’d drawn.  It was almost always an unsettling portrait of him, sometimes too thin, sometimes too fat, and often dripping blood.  The first bleeding one, with the blood coming from his leg, just made him think his wound had opened up without his noticing, and the side one…well, she had just been staring at a particularly bloody Crucifix on the wall, so he tried to write that off as well.  But when she called him over to show him a sketch of his own body lying prone on her hideously pink bed with his throat slashed open, the white bones shining bright in the midst of the copious blood…

            “What is the _matter_ with you?!” Arthur shouted at her.  “If you hate me, why are you holdin’ me prisoner here?  Just let me _leave_!”

            Diane leapt to her feet and slapped him, _hard_.  Then she ran out of the room without a word.

            “Woman’s bloody mental,” he muttered, rubbing his cheek.  Then he left the library and headed straight for the front door of the house.  As before, the dogs were loitering directly outside, and began to run at him as soon as he opened the door.

            Still, there was no one about, no one coming to see that he hadn’t left by the open door.  Arthur hurried over to the telephone and got as far as 9-1 before he stopped.  What could he possibly tell the police?  “I’m being held prisoner by Senator Montenegro’s beautiful daughter, who says she wants to marry me.”  The police would think _he_ was the mental one.

            If only he had a friend he could call, someone who had a car and could come get him…

            If only he knew Curt’s number…

            Since running away wasn’t really an option at the moment, Arthur decided to take advantage of Diane’s temporary absence by exploring the second storey.  Upon reaching the first floor, Arthur hesitated, listening intently.  He didn’t hear any indication of Diane stirring.  It was _probably_ safe…

            Cautiously, he mounted the stairs to the second storey.  To his right, Arthur saw a cheery passage, unlit but still bright, as sunlight came in through open doors, illuminating the worn carpeting that lined the hall.  To the left, the doors were all shut, cloaking the hall in darkness and giving it a forbidding air, like something out of a particularly grim fairy tale.  Between the notion of Diane secretly being a particularly svelte Bluebeard and the fear of the Senator’s guns, a sudden desire struck Arthur, urging him to retreat back down the stairs and get a torch, or just stay down there altogether.

            Setting that urge aside, Arthur walked into the dimly lit section of the hall and tried the first door.  It opened easily, without so much as a creaky hinge.  The room beyond turned out to be used for luggage storage, containing a great many suitcases, most of them expensive leather affairs.  More importantly, the room also contained Arthur’s own suitcase.  A hasty check revealed that all his belongings were still inside.

            All concerns of exploring were laid aside now.  Arthur hurried downstairs with his case, locking the door to his room as soon as he got inside.  He transferred his records into his satchel, which he stashed inside the bedside table’s lower compartment, then moved the suitcase itself into the closet, behind the suits that Diane had had made for him.  If the time came for him to escape, he’d want to be wearing his own clothes, not Diane’s tailor-made ones.  If he accomplished nothing else today, at least he had now done _something_.

            However, he didn’t want to rest on his laurels, especially not for such a small victory, so Arthur went back up to the second storey and went to the second door in the darkened section of the hallway.  It was the one opposite the luggage room, and it, too, was unlocked.  However, the light switch did nothing when Arthur flipped it, so he had to fumble his way through the room, trying to find the window.  After the third time he smashed a toe into something, he decided that he absolutely was _not_ going to investigate any further doors without a torch.

            Eventually, he did make his way to the far side of the room, and feeling his way across the wall, he found a window, and opened its heavy, dusty curtains.  The sunlight that poured into the room revealed a dusty, cobwebbed nursery.  The walls were pink, with clouds and rainbows around the edge of the ceiling, which was pock-marked with little star-shaped decorations.  The furniture was all pink, too, running the gamut from powder pink to violently neon.  Even the rocking horse near the crib was pink; it was a plush rocking horse in powder pink, with rose pink mane and tail, and a shimmering pearlescent horn on its forehead.  Inside the crib were dolls and stuffed animals, some looking quite new—aside from how dusty they were—and others looking as though they had spent a significant amount of time being chewed and drooled upon.

            Turning his attention to the furniture, Arthur saw a small table and chairs with a little pink plastic tea set laid out for tea, and bookshelves teeming with books.  He didn’t recognize very many of the books, despite that Diane only looked to be a few years younger than he was.  Surely their childhood libraries should have had a _few_ books in common!  His father hadn’t been one for nonsense, so it was hardly surprising that he had never been treated to the nearly psychedelic imagination of Dr. Seuss, but that made up only a fraction of these books.  Arthur pulled a random book down off the shelf.  It looked well-read, but as he flipped through it, he saw the copyright date was 1969.  Diane was most certainly over fifteen, so her nursery library couldn’t have contained a book first published in 1969!  But perhaps she had come across the book at some point as an older child and bought it on a whim, adding it to the nursery then?

            Returning the book to the shelf, Arthur went to the dresser.  It was shaped as though the manufacturer wanted to trick people into thinking it had been made from bamboo, yet it had also been painted pale pink, ruining the illusion entirely.  Opening the drawers, he found them full of quite small clothes, for a child perhaps no more than a year old.  He had just pulled out a pair of trousers—pink bellbottoms, of all things, with little spangles hanging from the belt—when he heard a gasp from behind him.

            “What are you doing in here?!” Diane exclaimed.

            Hastily, Arthur returned the tiny trousers to the drawer and shut it.  “I was just ‘aving a look about the place,” he explained.  “A journalist’s native curiosity.”

            Diane scowled at him, crossing her arms.  “I told you there’s nothing up here.”

            “Yes, but a whole floor of nothing?”

            “You come downstairs this instant!”

            “What’s so upsettin’ about a nursery?” Arthur asked.  Diane’s whole face was reddening to the point of being almost purple.

            “My mom died when I was a baby, and I haven’t set foot in this nursery ever since!  Downstairs!  Now!”

            Perplexed, Arthur nodded.  Hadn’t she said her mother died in childbirth?

            He thought about it carefully as he left the room and headed for the stairs.  She had most certainly said her mother died giving birth to her.  And while that nursery had clearly been left alone for many years, it didn’t have enough dust to have been untouched for twenty years or more.  But perhaps one of Edwards’ predecessors had kept cleaning the room for some time after its abandonment?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the bamboo-like furniture, I was trying to describe a pink version of the bedroom set I had as a kid. Mine was yellow, not pink, but if they made pale yellow, why not powder pink, too? I actually found a piece on Etsy that's the exact same style: https://www.etsy.com/listing/523267305/thomasville-vintage-faux-bamboo-desk?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=vintage&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=faux%20bamboo%20furniture&ref=sr_gallery_15 I didn't have a desk, but that's exactly what my bedroom set looked like. But if it was really from the 1960s like the seller says, then my parents bought me used furniture, 'cause I wasn't born until the mid-70s.


	9. Chapter 9

            “I probably should have asked this earlier, but is anyone looking for you?”  Curt mashed his cigarette onto the wall to put it out, then looked at Arthur.  “Your family’s not worried that you didn’t come home last night?”

            Arthur smiled and let out an uncomfortable little laugh.  “I haven’t seen my family in months.  They didn’t get me.”

            “Yeah, I know the feeling.  So you live alone now?”

            “No, I’m livin’ with some mates.”

            Curt chuckled, moving away from the wall.  “Mates, huh?  Literally or figuratively?”

            Arthur laughed.  “Mostly figuratively,” he said, feeling his cheeks heating up a bit.  “It’s very open.  I’m sure they ‘aven’t gone home yet anyway,” he added, with a laugh.  “They like a nice shag after a performance.”

            “One of the other acts?”

            “The Flaming Creatures.”

            “Oh, yeah?”  Curt looked up at the pale blue sky for a moment.  “Can’t quite picture you fucking any of them.”

            “Please don’t try to!” Arthur exclaimed, his voice breaking in his embarrassment.  That just made Curt laugh at him.

            But then he had moved closer still, taking Arthur in his arms and kissing him, peppering their embrace with questions about Arthur’s other friends—he didn’t have any—and with assurances that Curt would introduce Arthur to all _his_ friends—how quickly those promises had been forgotten!—until eventually talking was forgotten in favour of more intimate pastimes.

            The more Arthur thought about those sweet, passionate moments in the early morning’s quiet light, the more acutely he felt his current situation assaulting him.  The fact that he didn’t have anyone to look for him was irrelevant; Diane should have _expected_ him to have friends and family to worry about him, and yet she had made no attempts to contact his loved ones with reassurances that he was all right.  She had neither asked to meet his family and friends, nor offered to introduce him to her friends, or to her family beyond her father.  If she really thought that they were going to get married, then why hadn’t she endeavoured to meet those who were dear to him?

            Since she had caught him up on the second storey two days ago, Diane hadn’t let Arthur have a bloody moment’s peace.  The closest he could get to peace during the day was to watch television.  Even reading didn’t help, because she just chattered at him the whole time, trying to force him to pay attention to her instead of the book he was reading.

            Plainly, it was high time he turned her constant talking into something useful…

            She started in again as soon as he shut off the television to go downstairs to grab a bite for lunch.  Diane had two favourite topics:  her clothing and general beauty regimen, and her father’s political career.  This time, she was talking about politics, and in particular her father’s work with the Committee for Cultural Renewal.  “Daddy can’t stand the way everyone misinterprets the committee’s purpose,” she was saying.  “He said the liberal media is always putting these terrible labels on it, calling it fascist and mind control and things like that, you know?”

            “The Thought Police,” Arthur added, with a chuckle.  That was his personal favourite way to refer to the Committee for Cultural Renewal.  Though Lou had usually slashed it out and replaced it with something a bit less incendiary.

            “That sounds even worse!” Diane exclaimed.  “They’re not trying to punish people for thinking the wrong things!  Where would anyone get such an awful idea?”

            Arthur sighed.  “It’s a literary reference,” he explained.  “ _1984_ , by George Orwell.  Surely you’ve read it?”  Considering how much the real 1984 had in common with the one in the book, it should have been required reading just to exist in this nasty era…

            Diane shook her head.  “Daddy doesn’t approve of books like that.”

            “You realise that’s a serious danger sign, don't you?  You can't just accept it when someone tells you what you should and shouldn’t read.  Would you accept it if he told you that two plus two equals five?”

            Diane giggled.  “You’re so silly, darling.  Daddy would never tell me anything that wasn’t true.”  Translation:  ‘yes, I certainly would.’  Clearly, Diane loved Big Brother.  “And it sounds like you don’t get the committee at all,” she went on, shaking her head with a _tsk_ ing noise.  “They’re just trying to protect the children from all the terrible influences that have crept into popular culture.”

            “Like good rock music,” Arthur sighed.  The committee only approved of acts like Tommy Stone, whose songs all toed their conservative line, and had about as much depth as a single sheet of blank paper.

            “That’s an oxymoron!” Diane laughed.  “Daddy has all kinds of scientific studies on all the terrible social ills rock music is responsible for.  It causes adultery and homosexuality, and Daddy thinks it probably caused AIDS, too.”

            “That’s utter shite!”

            “Daddy says it’s been proven that men are more likely to have sex with other men right after a rock show,” Diane insisted.  “It was a study someone ran in England about ten years ago.”

            Arthur sighed deeply.  “Diane, there was a singer back then who made being bisexual popular; if someone was studyin’ the sexual patterns of men after a Brian Slade concert, of course they’d have a higher incidence of ‘aving sex with each other than was average at the time.  It had nothing to do with his music; it was because of how he dressed and what he said when he _wasn’t_ singin’.”

            Diane looked at him with worry.  “You never listened to any of his music, did you?”

            “I was a big fan.”  In some ways, he still was, really.  He’d sold his Brian Slade records along with all the others, but Arthur still loved the music, despite everything that had happened since 5 February, 1974.

            “But you’re so pretty!  What would you have done if some man had made a pass at you?!”

            Arthur laughed, shaking his head.  “I loved his message more than his music.  It let me accept that there was nothing wrong with me for likin’ boys as well as girls.”

            “That’s not funny.”

            “It’s not meant to be.”

            Diane shuddered.  “Clearly you need to be protected from the evils of rock music until your soul can heal!”

            Arthur grimaced.  “You can’t ‘ave had many friends at uni if you spouted beliefs like that.”

            “Uni?”

            “University.  College.  Where did you say you went?  Bryn Mawr?”

            “Wellesley,” Diane corrected him snippishly.  Well, at least she remembered what she had said earlier.  But that didn’t make it true…

            “And what did the other students say when you told them rock music was evil?”

            Diane just looked at him blankly.  “Why would I have told them that?”

            “What?  But—you just said—I…”  Arthur’s attempts to answer the question floundered into silence.  After a moment, he shook his head.  “When did you graduate?  I mean, how long has it been since you were a student?”

            “Oh, that was…when was that?”  Diane’s face puckered up into a perplexed little scowl.  On anyone else, it might have been rather cute.  “I think I graduated in, um, 1970…something?”

            “That can’t be right.”

            “How would _you_ know?!” Diane insisted, stamping a foot in a particularly irritating manner of showing her irritation.  “When did _you_ graduate from college?”

            Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “Never went,” he admitted to the tops of his shoes.

            Diane laughed.  “See?  No wonder you don’t get it.”  There was a pause, in which Arthur looked back up at her face.  She looked dismayed.  “But I don’t know that Daddy will want me to marry a man who didn’t go to college.”

            “Seein’ as I don’t want to marry you in the first place…”

            “We may have to get you a degree,” Diane went on, ignoring him.  “Maybe just a fake one to convince Daddy that you’re okay.  What were your grades like in high school?”

            “Er…they were nothing noteworthy.  Not terribly bad, but not very good, either.”  Yet one more way he had let his father down.

            “Is that why you didn’t go to college?”

            “No, that had more to do with not graduatin’ secondary school.”

            “Secondary school?” Diane repeated.

            Arthur sighed.  “High school.”

            “Why didn’t you graduate?!”

            “I ran off to London in pursuit of men who sang rock, of course.”  Maybe _that_ would finally get her to give up!

            Diane’s eyes widened for a moment, but then they went back to normal and she laughed.  “You really are good at spouting such nonsense with a straight face,” she said.

            “It’s not nonsense.  It’s the truth.”  Though he hadn’t so much run off looking for glam rock singers as simply run off and then had the good fortune to encounter them.

            Diane just shook her head, clearly unconvinced.  “Just don’t start saying crazy stuff like this after Daddy comes home.  He won’t get the joke.”

            “It’s not a joke!”  Arthur shook his head.  “How could you have graduated university without encountering anyone that didn’t fit into your father’s rose-coloured view of 1950s life?” he asked.  “I know women’s colleges have a higher percentage of lesbian students than normal universities.  Surely you didn’t tell them they were sinning or deluded by too much rock music?”

            “Oh, lesbians are different,” Diane said.  “They’re not dangerous like gay men.”

            “What the bloody hell are you on about now?!”

            “Well, lesbians can’t give anyone diseases, for starters.”

            “That’s not true,” Arthur sighed.  “There’s still the exchange of bodily fluids.  That’s all it takes.”

            “And they can’t rape straight girls like gay men can rape straight men.”

            “You ask around at a women’s prison and see what they have to say about women rapin’ other women!” Arthur snapped at her.  Early in his journalistic career he’d been given an assignment about rape in prison.  He hadn’t liked the idea in the slightest, but he’d taken it because it seemed better left in _his_ hands, since he wouldn’t turn it into something homophobic.  But then he’d been expected to cover a women’s prison as well as a men’s prison.  That had been horribly embarrassing.  His co-workers had gotten a good laugh out of the look on his face when he found out.  “And it’s more likely for a supposedly straight man to rape a man he thinks is gay as a form of torture than it is for a gay man to rape a straight one,” he added.

            “That’s just silly!” Diane insisted.

            “In a lot of people, homophobia is a way of denying the fact that they’re actually attracted to their own sex,” Arthur added.  The few studies he’d seen on the subject suggested it was a very small minority of homophobes whose hatred was trying to blame others for their own desires, but in this context it seemed justified to bend the truth.

            “Are you accusing my father of being secretly gay?” Diane demanded, glaring at him.

            “Shite, you admit he’s a homophobe…and you’re proud of that?  Don’t you have any sense of shame?”

            “There’s nothing wrong with hating a social disease.”  Diane shook her head sadly.  “You know, there’s even a cure, but Daddy says it’s all too rare that it’s ever applied.”

            Arthur sighed.  “The only way to ‘cure’ homosexuality would be to spontaneously and completely change the person’s sex.  But most gay men wouldn’t want to become a woman even if offered the chance.”

            “No, no, nothing that gross.  But Daddy says they can be cured with a little electroshock treatment.”

            “Then your father is a jabbering lunatic,” Arthur snapped.  “I know a man who was put through that shite when he was a boy, and it left a permanent mark on his mind!”

            “But it cured him of being gay, right?”

            “Considerin’ the lovely shag we had on the rooftop, no, it thankfully did nothing of the sort,” Arthur laughed.  “It just made him go bonkers whenever he hears an electric guitar,” he added, wondering what Cecil would think about hearing his words reapplied in this context.

            “What…I don’t understand,” Diane said, looking at him with confusion.  “Why did you have carpeting installed on a roof?”

            “Carpet…?  For pity’s sake!  How can you be _that_ sheltered?!  I know it’s not in the American vernacular, but ‘shag’ is hardly an uncommon way to refer to quick sex.  ‘Ave you really never seen any British movies or television programmes?”

            “Well, Daddy says—”

            “If you say one more word about your bloody father, I swear I’ll kill you!”

            Diane backed away, staring at him in terror, her lower lip trembling.  The expression immediately sent a pang of guilt stabbing into Arthur’s heart.

            “I wouldn’t really—it’s just a figure of speech,” he sighed.  “I’ve never even hit anyone, let alone tried to commit murder.  Couldn’t, even if I wanted to.  But I don’t want to hear any more about your father’s reactionary politics and opinions.  If I wanted that, I’d go to a Reynolds rally and get it direct from the source.”  Admittedly, his job had often required such unpleasant actions, but at least he’d been in the press box, so everyone knew he didn’t want to be there.

            “Daddy’s good friends with President Reynolds,” Diane commented.

            “Yes, I’m aware of that,” Arthur sighed.  “But please stop talkin’ about your father for five minutes!  Don’t you have any _friends_?”

            “Friends…?  Um…”  Diane bit her lip and shut her eyes.  When she finally opened them again to smile at Arthur, the expression looked blank, almost forced.  “Well, you’re my friend.”

            “I’m not.”  More like her prisoner.  “Didn’t you make any friends at Wellesley?”

            “Oh, of course I did!  Lots of them!  But we sort of drifted apart after graduation…”

            “Why?  It can’t ‘ave been that long ago.”

            “Well, things get so confusing and complicated with getting married, it’s no wonder we all lost track of each other,” Diane said, with a shrug.

            “Your friends all got married right out of college?”  Arthur didn’t think girls still did that in this day and age.  Not in large enough numbers to account for _all_ of her friends doing it.  Unless she was lying and only had a few friends, but even then it seemed somehow improbable.

            “Oh, no, just…um…that was…”  Her face took on a vexed expression, which slowly, gently slid off into one of blank confusion.  “What were we talking about?”

            Arthur stared at her, trying to gauge the honesty of her confusion.  It looked pretty honest.  “Forget about it,” he said with a smile.  Since she already had anyway.  “But tell me something.  Don’t you have any family other than your father?”

            “Well, Mom died when I was little, so…no.”

            “No grandparents?  No cousins, aunts, uncles, nothing?”

            “Oh….uh…well, my dad’s parents died before I was born—he’s ever so old, you know—and he doesn’t get on with my mom’s parents at all, so I’ve never met them.  I’m not sure they’re both alive anyway.  And my dad was an only child, so…”

            “How could you never ‘ave met your grandparents?”

            “Well, have you met _yours_?”

            “They were all killed in World War II.  Three in the Blitz, one in combat.”  Or that was what he’d always been told, anyway.  “I’d certainly ‘ave met them if they were still alive.  It’s not normal not to, especially if your mum dies when you’re still small.”

            Diane shrugged.  “Daddy could afford nurses.  Besides, they’re all the way in Boston.”

            “That’s not very far away.  Barely a day’s drive.  Besides, isn’t Wellesley in Boston?”

            “Of course it is!  That’s why I was allowed to go there.  So they could keep an eye on me.”

            “What?”  Something in her story had to be untrue.  But she had such a blank, innocent look on her face, as if she was being completely earnest.

            After a long, uncomfortable pause, Diane sighed.  “Are we really going to stand here and talk all afternoon?  I’m famished!”

            “Oh, but—uh—”

            “Come along downstairs so I can eat lunch!” Diane insisted, tugging his hand and pulling him towards the stairs.

            As Arthur followed after her, he tried to figure out if this was just an act to change the subject, or if she really didn’t understand why everything she had said in the last ten minutes was waving warning flags in his head.


	10. Chapter 10

            Arthur spent the next two days trying to find subtle ways to wheedle more information out of Diane about her family, friends and schooling.  He felt sure that if he could just unlock the secret behind the inconsistency of her stories, it would provide the key to his freedom.  If nothing else, it might at least give him something to blackmail Montenegro with, to force his own release.  He hardly liked the idea of resorting to blackmail, but it beat staying locked up in here.  Even going to prison would beat staying locked in this lonely manor with no one to talk to other than the irritating Diane and the rather reluctant Edwards.

            He hadn’t made any progress by the time outside interference arrived, however, in the form of the doctor who had come to tend to his leg wound earlier.  The fellow examined Arthur’s leg—which was by now entirely healed up, with only a few scabs and some fresh scar tissue to show it had ever been there at all—for several minutes, then sent Diane out of the room and began to ask Arthur a series of probing questions, most of which seemed entirely irrelevant and certainly none of his business.  After the third question about his sexual habits, Arthur couldn’t quite stand it anymore.

            “Just _why_ are you askin’ me all these questions?!” he demanded.  “My sexual history’s got nothing to do with my leg healin’ up!”

            The doctor smiled grimly.  “Senator Montenegro did happen to mention your good fortune in attracting Miss Diane’s eye,” he said.  “It’s only natural that I should wish to protect her health and happiness, is it not?”

            Arthur grimaced.  “I don’t call that ‘good fortune.’  More like a curse.  I just want to get out of this bloody house and be free of that woman.”  Though he still had no idea where he could go or how he could live with no job and very little money.

            The doctor cocked an eyebrow, then got to his feet and patted Arthur on the shoulder.  “Don’t worry,” he chuckled.  “I’m sure you’ll get over your case of the jitters soon enough.”

            “It’s not—” Arthur started, but there was no use going further:  the other man was already out of the room.

            By the time Arthur righted his trouser leg and followed the doctor out of the room, the other man was already talking to Diane.  “He _is_ going to be all right, isn’t he, Dr. Weissman?” she was asking.

            “Of course, my dear.  But I’d like to speak to you in private for a while,” the doctor replied.

            Diane looked taken aback.  “Why?  I’m fine.  I don’t need another session.”  Session?  That seemed an odd word to use for the visit of a physician…

            “Your father believed it might be in everyone’s best interests if we return to more regular sessions,” the doctor said, scowling down at her.

            With a dismayed sigh, Diane nodded, and led the doctor towards her bedroom.  Just before she went inside, she turned to look at Arthur.  “Why don’t you go downstairs and do more of your dreary reading?” she suggested.  “That way you’ll have more time for me when I’m done.”

            Arthur nodded—anything to be rid of her for a little while!—but Diane wouldn’t go through her door until he actually started going down the stairs.  Fine.  That was where he needed to go first, anyway.  After a moment’s thought, he headed towards the kitchens.  It seemed as likely a place as any to find a torch.

            The kitchen was empty when he got there, so Arthur started looking through drawers and cabinets, hoping to find a torch stashed somewhere.  He found a drawer full of odds and ends, and was looking through it when he heard a voice address him.  “What _are_ you doing?”

            Arthur looked away from the drawer’s contents to flash an uneasy smile at Edwards.  “Just lookin’ for a torch.”

            “What do you need with a torch?”

            Was honesty the right idea in this situation, or should he make up some sort of innocuous lie?  Probably the lie would be safer, but he couldn’t think of one…  “I wanted to have a look around on the second storey, but the lights have gone.”

            “There’s nothing up there,” Edwards told him.  “Just my few rooms, and the luggage storage.  And the Senator’s game room.”

            “You’ve seen in every one of those other rooms?”

            “Well, no, but why would the Senator lie?”

            Arthur sighed.  “I just need to see for myself.”

            Edwards shrugged.  “Suit yourself.  But I doubt the young lady will like you being up there.”

            “She’s busy with the doctor.  I should have at least half an hour.”

            “Dr. Weissman’s sessions with her usually last an hour, actually,” Edwards chuckled as he opened a closet door and withdrew a torch.  “Best keep your watch handy to make sure you don’t stay too long.  She’s testy when things don’t go her way.”

            “So I’ve noticed,” Arthur agreed, accepting the torch from him.  “But what are they doin’ for an hour?”

            Edwards chuckled.  “The usual chat.  What do you expect from a head-shrinker?”

            “He’s not a physician?”

            Edwards shook his head.  “He’s got some medical training, naturally, but his degrees are in psychology.  Or was it psychiatry?  Never have been sure what the difference is between them.”

            “So why did she call him to see to my leg?”

            “She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed,” Edwards laughed.

            Arthur nodded, then thanked Edwards for the torch, and hurried back to the stairs.  An hour wasn’t very long for his purposes, after all!  He didn’t really accept Edwards’ explanation of Diane being dim, though.  She hadn’t so far displayed any great intellect, it was true, but if she had really gone to Wellesley and graduated, then she was far from stupid; the school was very well respected for the quality of the education it imparted to its students.  Whatever was wrong with Diane’s brain, it wasn’t lack of intelligence.  The fact that she was regularly obtaining psychiatric treatment probably indicated that she really _did_ have some kind of mental disorder.  That only made it all the more important that he be finished with his exploring well before she was done with Dr. Weissman; if she was imbalanced in some way, departing from her expectations too radically might cause any number of unpleasant and unexpected reactions.

            He did his best to climb the second set of stairs as quietly as possible, lest Diane hear him.  Flipping on the torch, Arthur headed to the closed door just past the luggage room.  Unfortunately, it was locked.  The door opposite it was also locked.  In fact, every other door on that wing of the hall was locked.

            So much for easy answers.

            Arthur returned to the luggage room, opened the door to get some natural light, and then shut off the torch before crouching to give the locking mechanism a thorough inspection.  It was a very old-fashioned lock with a huge keyhole—the kind of thing someone might peer through to witness a murder in an old detective novel.  He had seen a large key-ring down in one of the kitchen drawers, but not a single key on it had been the right style for such locks.

            Annoyed, Arthur returned to the kitchen.  Edwards was smirking at him slightly.  “You knew those bloody doors were all locked, didn’t you?” Arthur asked.

            Edwards fought the laughter for a moment or two before releasing it.

            “Why didn’t you just say so?”

            “Would you have taken my word for it?”

            “Probably not,” Arthur admitted, “but I’d still ‘ave liked a little warning before wastin’ all that time.”  He shook his head.  “How long ‘ave they been locked?”

            “The whole time I’ve been working here,” Edwards told him.  “The Senator told me they’re empty.”

            “No one bothers to lock an empty room.”

            “They do when they’ve got a dim-witted child roaming the house.  Most of the Senator’s security provisions seem to be to protect Miss Diane from herself.”

            “Like the vicious dogs that seemed ready to attack her as well as me?” Arthur asked.  “That’s no way to protect someone.”  Not to mention the entire fucking _armoury_ on the ground floor.  If she actually was dim-witted, she could accidentally kill herself a thousand times over with the contents of that room.

            “I believe they have been trained not to attack her.  Their blood was just up because they thought you were an intruder.”

            Arthur sighed.  He had never had a dog himself, but some of his mates when he was a child had, and he’d never seen a dog that would turn on its owner like that without reason.  “How do _you_ get past them?  Or people makin’ deliveries to the house?”

            “Deliveries are made at the gate, and I have to pick them up from there,” Edwards informed him.  “As to how I get past them…I do as the Senator instructed me.  I feed them and then hightail it before they get done eating.  And they still snap at me if I’m not fast enough, despite how many times I’ve fed them, the ungrateful wretches.”

            Then perhaps sneaking some meat out of the kitchen might be a way past the dogs…?  Sounded a bit dodgy as a plan, though.  And he’d probably have to climb over that gate, which would give them all too much time to finish eating…


	11. Chapter 11

            Dr. Weissman was now making daily visits to Diane, giving Arthur plenty of opportunities to investigate the house.  For the past three days, he had used that hour of freedom to search the house for the keys to the upstairs rooms, even going so far as to have a careful look about in the Senator’s blood red bedchamber.  Nothing had turned up that even remotely looked like the key for one of those old-fashioned locks.

            So Arthur decided to try the direct route.  Nipping into the kitchen while Edwards was talking to Diane about what he should serve for lunch, Arthur grabbed the torch, a small screwdriver and some odd bits of wire and nails out of a tool drawer, then carefully stashed them all behind a cushion on one of the least comfortable chairs in the library.  As soon as Diane was closed in her room with Dr. Weissman for their hour-long therapy session, Arthur retrieved his make-shift toolkit and headed for the second floor.

            Crouching down in front of the first locked door, he tried to use the torch to look around inside the lock and get an idea of just how it worked, what he would have to do to make it open.  As many movies as he had seen where someone picked this kind of lock with a bobby pin, he still had no idea how it was actually _done_.  And he didn’t have a bobby pin, either, just some wire.  It wasn’t terribly stiff wire, either—looked like it had been used to hang a picture at some point—but after he’d twisted it around a few times, it gained a bit of stiffness.  Hopefully that was enough.

            Wiggling the wire about this way and that until something inside clicked took up a good quarter of his sole hour, but it paid off in the sense that the door was finally unlocked, and Arthur could go inside to look around.

            The light switch did nothing, so Arthur had to use the torch to look around.  Most of the room’s contents were covered by sheets and cobwebs, giving the place an eerie look.  One of the few things uncovered was an artist’s easel, with a canvas still resting on it, only half-painted.  Perhaps Diane’s mother had collected art because she was an artist herself?

            Arthur didn’t want to waste time on speculations, and quickly shut the door again, turning his attention to the door on the opposite side of the hall.  Since he had some idea of what he was doing this time, it didn’t take _quite_ as long to pick the lock.  This time, the lights worked, and Arthur found himself staring at a room filled with nothing but armoires, some elaborate and others of simple pine.

            The air was stale and smelled of wood and sawdust.  Arthur’s every motion sent dust floating through the air, and made cobwebs drift idly in the small breeze.  The whole effect set shivers down his spine, and Arthur found himself quite tempted to turn around and leave, chalking up the room’s function to ‘clothing storage.’

            But what if it _wasn’t_ clothing in those wardrobes?  What if it was evidence of some terrible crime?  What if it was dead bodies?

            That thought didn’t make him feel any more inclined to open the armoires and have a look, but he knew he had to do it.  If he was just going to lose his nerve without actually _examining_ the contents of any of these rooms, then what was the point of breaking into them in the first place?

            The armoire nearest to the door on the left-hand side was a charming wooden one that had been painted pink and drizzled with glitter.  It seemed like the perfect starting point, so Arthur carefully opened the door, hoping its hinges weren’t rusty.

            The sight that met his eyes was an unexpectedly pleasant one.  Rows of women’s blouses and dresses and bellbottom trousers, many spangled and glittery.  Pulling out one of the few T-shirts, Arthur found that it had a large pair of cherries appliquéd on the chest, just above the heart.  The sight made him smile despite everything.  Those were Brian Slade’s cherries.  How proud of himself Arthur had been the day he had gotten up his courage to wear a shirt with that symbol on it back home!  But what was it doing here?  Diane would have been the youngest of teens when Brian Slade had his own career assassinated, and these were the clothes of an adult woman, so they couldn’t belong to Diane if they were genuinely from the early ‘70s.

            Putting the shirt back, Arthur began looking through all the other clothes in the wardrobe.  Rainbow-coloured mini-dresses, blouses woven of a shimmery material, sequined trousers, jackets with exotic patches of all colours ironed on…hardly an item in the closet didn’t bring back fond memories of the happiest period of his life.  Stepping away from the armoire, he saw that its floor was filled with a rainbow of platform shoes.

            The sound of the dogs barking furiously outside the house roused him from his torpor, and Arthur hastily shut the armoire again, checking his watch.  He barely had twenty minutes left.  How had the time passed so quickly?

            He had to be more efficient!

            The rest of the wardrobes proved much less affecting.  The ones that were full—about two-thirds of them, if not more—were also filled with women’s clothing, mostly from the ‘60s, in styles that ranged from Jackie Kennedy-inspired outfits to mod.  The other armoires held only a few old suits and coats, which appeared to belong to Senator Montenegro.

            As Arthur hurried down the stairs to hide his toolkit in the dresser in his own room, he couldn’t help wondering what the lack of children’s clothing indicated.  The untouched nursery surely indicated that Senator Montenegro wasn’t the type to get rid of a child’s clothes just because she had outgrown them.  So why hadn’t any of those armoires contained Diane’s clothes?  And just _whose_ clothes had filled those wardrobes?

            If Diane’s mother had died giving birth to her, then she would have died in the early ‘60s, or the very late ‘50s.  But Diane had changed her story about her mother’s death once already, moving the timing from her own birth to her early childhood.  If that story was _still_ wrong…maybe these clothes belonged to her mother?  If the woman lived until Diane’s early teens, perhaps she had become enamoured of glam rock before her death.  And perhaps her death had been so traumatic that it had left Diane a bit mentally unstable?

            But if she’d been unstable for the last ten years, then there was surely no way she had attended university…

 

*******

 

            Arthur’s mind had been racing all morning.  He wanted desperately to get back up to the second floor and search the locked rooms for more information.  With the tantalising clues now available to him, he saw several possible explanations for everything odd going on in this house, but none of them quite seemed to explain everything.  Diane was too young for those clothes to have been hers, and too old for the things in the nursery to have been hers.  The most logical explanation seemed to be that she had had a younger sister, who died in the early ‘70s, along with their mother.  If that was the case the emotional trauma might have been such that it caused Diane to purge all her memories of them, but if that was the case, surely she wouldn’t have attended university, and yet she had been droning on at him all morning about her school days and friends, and about all the places she used to go.  The sheer volume of the details strongly suggested that it was no fabrication.

            After a dull luncheon marked only by Diane’s constant chatter, Arthur decided to learn what little he could before Dr. Weissman’s arrival would free him up to explore.  Ignoring all of Diane’s exhortations, Arthur headed into the gallery and crossed the whole length of it to the covered painting.  Seeing the Senator’s wedding portrait might help to answer a few questions…

            As he reached for the drape hiding the painting from view, Diane grabbed Arthur’s hands, pulling them back.  “What do you think you’re doing?!”

            “I just want to see it,” Arthur assured her, with the warmest smile he could muster.  “What’s the harm?”

            “But…”

            “Don’t you want to see your mother’s face again?”

            “No!” Diane insisted.  “I absolutely never, ever do!”

            Arthur wasn’t sure how to react to that.  A momentary, terrifying scenario passed through his mind.  Could Diane have been responsible for her mother’s death?  Freud’s Electra Complex played out with grim reality?  But if the clothes upstairs belonged to her mother, she’d have been quite young—only in her early teens—when her mother died.  Could such a young girl kill?  Yes, yes absolutely, especially if he father collected guns and swords and other instruments of violent death.  But surely Senator Montenegro wouldn’t have been able to cover it up if one of his daughters murdered his wife.  And what of the other daughter?  Would Diane have killed her, too, in that scenario?  It hardly seemed to have any proper motivation.  It was an absurd idea anyway.  That sort of thing rarely happened in reality, and certainly not in such a well-to-do family.  If Diane didn’t want to see her mother’s face, it was because of the emotional trauma she’d suffered when her mother died.  Nothing else made sense.

            Carefully, Arthur extracted his hands from Diane’s.  “I understand,” he assured her, “but I need to see.  You can just look away, or close your eyes, all right?  I’ll cover it up again when I’m done.”

            “You promise?”  Her vulnerable expression was like a child’s.

            “I promise.”

            With a subdued noise in the depths of her throat, Diane closed her eyes.  Her forehead remained wrinkled with concern, and her mouth stayed puckered into a little frown.  Overall, her expression was making him quite uncomfortable and even a little guilt-ridden, so Arthur told himself that he’d be as quick about it as he could.

            Gently, he pulled aside the velvet drape, exposing the painting.  It was a very typical wedding portrait, even if most of them would have been photographed rather than painted in this day and age.  Senator Montenegro was wearing a white tuxedo, and his young wife stood beside him in a timeless white gown, holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand, her other hand set on his arm gently.  She was an attractive woman, and looked quite a lot like Diane.  Arthur looked back and forth between the painting and Diane several times, and eventually picked out that the largest difference between them was that Diane’s nose was smaller than her mother’s:  it was more of the ‘button nose’ sort, while her mother’s was a lovely aquiline nose.  Diane’s mother looked to have become a bride at a very young age, possibly without even graduating university first, so Diane seemed to be some two or three years older than her mother was in the portrait.  Her father appeared a good thirty or thirty-five years younger in the painting.  Either they had waited a few years before having Diane, or he had aged somewhat poorly.

            The portrait seemed to raise more questions that it resolved.  If Diane’s mother had barely been of marriageable age when Diane was born—if the Senator hadn’t appeared too much younger in the portrait—it would have seemed more believable that Diane’s mother might have become a Brian Slade fan before her death.  So long as one assumed that she had, in fact, lived on into the early ‘70s.  But if twenty years had passed between marriage and death in the ‘70s, then Diane’s mother would have been at least forty.  Arthur wasn’t sure Brian had had _any_ fans that old.  Particularly not any heterosexual ones.  And would a Senator’s wife really be allowed to dress up in glam style?

            Something was still out of joint…

            Frustrated, Arthur covered up the painting again, and told Diane she could open her eyes again.  “Why would you want to see Mom’s portrait anyway?” Diane asked, scowling at him.  “Are you like Daddy, and you think I’m not as pretty as Mom?”

            “I just…wanted to see…”  Somehow, he couldn’t quite find it in himself to say that he was wondering if her mother had been perhaps a bit too young when Diane was born, making her young enough to follow the glam scene.  Though as a journalist he had been trained—a bit—to be insensitive when a story demanded it, he’d never been terribly good at it; it required more rudeness than he could easily produce.

            “ _Do_ you think I’m not as pretty?”

            “I think you look very much like your mother,” Arthur assured her.  There was no way any honest person with working eyes could think anything else, after all.

            Judging by the extreme delight that spread over Diane’s face, that had perhaps been the wrong answer.  He didn’t, after all, want to encourage her in her delusion that he might marry her.  Though her delusion seemed to be self-reinforcing, so maybe there was no point in worrying about it.  In any event, she grabbed his hand and insisted that they leave the gallery right away.  He didn’t fight it as she dragged him out and up the stairs to the first floor.  He _had_ caused her a lot of—possibly unnecessary—emotional pain by insisting on uncovering that painting, after all.

            Diane shooed him into the television room, and turned on the telly, switching between the channels until she found an agonisingly bad children’s educational programme.  “Isn’t this cute?” she said, settling down on the sofa and patting the seat beside her.

            “That’s not the word I’d use for it,” Arthur replied, sitting down on one of the armchairs that faced the fireplace.  While Diane continued watching the grating children’s programme, Arthur tried to focus on his current situation, on finding some way to suss out what was really going on, not to mention a method of using that to get away.

            The telephone rang after about ten minutes, but Edwards must have answered it, as it stopped again quickly.  Nothing else happened until Edwards came to get them for lunch.

            “Who was on the telephone, Edwards?” Diane asked, as she got up off the sofa.

            “It was Dr. Weissman,” Edwards informed her.  “It would seem that he’s occupied today, and cannot make it.”

            Shite!  If he wasn’t coming today, how was Arthur going to get any time away from Diane?

            “Why are you so upset by that?” Diane suddenly demanded, looking at him suspiciously.

            Arthur flinched.  Had his consternation shown on his face?  “What would I be upset about that for?” he replied, hoping he sounded innocent enough for her to believe he was genuinely confused by the accusation.

            “That’s what I just asked _you_.”

            “Er…”  How was he supposed to talk his way out of this?

            “I’m sure the young man is simply concerned that you won’t be getting the treatment you require, Miss Diane,” Edwards supplied.

            “Of course that’s it!” Arthur added, perhaps a little too hastily.  In a way, it was actually true:  the more treatment she got, the more chance she’d admit that he didn’t want to marry her and let him go.  Maybe.

            “Oh, you’re worried about me?”  Diane smiled widely, and moved over to give him a big hug.  “You’re so sweet, darling!”

            As Arthur tried to get her to let go of him, he reflected that this was probably going to be a very, very long and unpleasant day…


	12. Chapter 12

            Diane had become agonisingly clingy since Arthur had taken a look at her parents’ wedding portrait.  She spent the entirety of the next day refusing to be parted from him for a second.  It was, in fact, only with the greatest reluctance that she agreed to allow him privacy in the loo.  And when Dr. Weissman arrived for her session, she refused to see him unless Arthur was allowed to join the session.  While the doctor was still agog at the very idea, Arthur piped up to assure him that he’d sit in the corner, not listening, quiet as a mouse.  Because it would be, after all, quite enlightening to know just what Diane’s mental issues were.

            Dr. Weissman, naturally enough, insisted that he could allow no such audience for a session, and left the manor in a huff.  Arthur noticed that the man had taken the wise precaution of parking his car as close to the front door as humanly possible, allowing him to get into the car before the dogs even scented him.  That might be useful in the future…

            For the remainder of the day, Diane cleaved to Arthur’s side like a strangling vine, until he was feeling so constricted he wasn’t sure he could even breathe properly, let alone read a book.  So the next day, when Diane was just as insistent that he couldn’t have any time alone, Arthur gave up and tried to spend the whole day simply watching television, despite how terribly dull _that_ idea was.  However, Diane was even less keen on the idea than he was, and she spent all morning trying to find things for the two of them to do together.  “I’m not just going to sit quietly and watch TV all day when we’re married, after all!” she exclaimed.  She came up with a number of tolerable suggestions—card games, board games, assembling jigsaw puzzles—all of which quickly had her fidgeting in boredom, despite that they were her own idea.

            “What _do_ you spend all your days at normally?” Arthur asked, after Diane suddenly hurled the Monopoly board across the room.  She hadn’t even been losing the game.

            “Well, I guess I do watch TV a lot when I’m alone,” she admitted, “but mostly I like to swim and play racquetball and go shopping.  Oh, would you like to swim or play some racquetball?” Diane asked eagerly, her eyes lighting up.

            “You’re not goin’ to suggest shopping?” Arthur asked, trying to keep a straight face.  Going shopping—except for records or books—was one of his least favourite activities, but anything that would get him out of this house would be good!

            “Oh, no, men _hate_ going shopping.  Everyone knows _that_.”

            “I’ve known a number of men who loved shopping,” Arthur assured her.  Of course, the Flaming Creatures were unusual men in every possible way.  And just at present Arthur missed them terribly.  “We always used to enjoy our outings together.”  He didn’t like shopping for clothes by himself, but he had been thrilled to have them all fawning over him and picking out things to pretty him up.

            “No, no, you’re not like that,” Diane laughed.  “Only fruity men like to shop.”

            Arthur failed to repress his laughter.  While ‘fruity’ wasn’t the way his exes would ever have described themselves, it came to about the same thing as the ‘Flaming’ nature they had so proudly labelled themselves with.

            Diane just crossed her arms and glared at him until he stopped laughing.  “So, which is it?” she asked.  “Swimming or racquetball?”

            “Where is there to go swimmin’ here?” Arthur asked.

            “Oh, there’s a lovely pool out beyond the garage.”

            “How do you get to it past the dogs?”  It was copiously clear to Arthur by this point that the dogs’ main function was not to keep intruders out, but to keep Diane _in_.  Even if they failed at that job fairly spectacularly.

            Diane looked at him blankly for a moment, then sank down into a chair with a crestfallen expression.  “That’s right, I can’t,” she sighed.  “It’s not really warm enough for swimming anyway,” she added, returning to a blithely cheerful tone.  “So let’s play racquetball!”

            “I’m not really—I don’t know how to play,” Arthur replied.  “You go play, and I’ll just go downstairs to the library and read.”

            “No!”  It was the shriek of a woman being physically assaulted.  “You’re staying with me!”

            The shriek had made Arthur flinch unconsciously, and his eyes remained shut even after his posture started to recover a bit.  By the time he finally opened them again, Diane was standing right in front of him, smiling widely.

            “Don’t worry, darling,” she chirped.  “I’ll teach you how to play.”

            That had not been Arthur’s concern in the least, but there was no point in correcting her.  He allowed her to lead him down the hall to her room, where she changed into her racquetball clothes—while Arthur kept his face turned to the wall, lest she be encouraged into thinking he wanted to see her unclad body.  From her room, they walked the whole length of the first floor hall to the racquetball court, which had been built into the large room at the end, the mirror opposite location of the Senator’s red room.

            The racquetball supplies were kept in a small closet built into one wall, and unfortunately there were indeed two racquets as well as a large number of the little blue rubber balls, so Arthur had no excuse to avoid playing.  The rules—at least as Diane explained them—were very simple, and as they started playing, Arthur had to reflect that it might actually be a pleasant way to spend time, if he was playing with someone he could actually stand being around.

            Diane had a frustrating tendency to hit the ball right into the corners of the room, making it bounce back in ways that Arthur had trouble predicting.  Eventually, that gave him the excuse he needed:  a missed ball bounced off the floor and hit him in the leg, very near where he had been bitten by the dog three weeks ago.

            Dropping his racquet, Arthur clutched his leg and cried out in overdramatised pain.  “I guess it wasn’t so healed up after all,” he moaned, as Diane began asking him over and over again what was wrong.  “I’ll have to go and lie down, I think,” Arthur went on, letting go of his leg again.

            “Nonsense!  You can just sit down in the corner and watch as I play by myself,” Diane insisted.  “I won’t miss and let the ball come near you, I promise.”

            “No, no, I’d be in the way.  I’ll just go and lie down.”

            Arthur had just started opening the door when he felt something collide with the back of his head.  Stunned, he staggered back, and turned to look at Diane, who was glaring hate at him.  Her racquet lay near his feet, where it had landed after striking him.  “What the bloody hell did you do that for?!”  He was feeling the back of his head even as he shouted, worried that she might have drawn blood.

            “You are staying here with me!”  Her face turned the colour of a ripe cherry as she screamed at him, and the way she was still clutching one of the racquetballs worried Arthur.  He doubted she could cause much damage with one—not compared to the racquet especially—but it still didn’t seem like a good idea to antagonise her further.

            “All right, all right, I’m stayin’,” Arthur grunted, as he lowered himself to sit on the floor in the corner.  He kept hold of his racquet, just in case she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—protect him from stray balls as well as she said she could.

            As Diane began to play with a violence that was highly alarming, Arthur realised that he was feeling a little dizzy.  The racquet must have hit him harder than he had thought.  Hopefully, he’d be able to talk her into letting him take a nap when Dr. Weissman arrived for her session.  Much as he hated the idea of giving up a possible opportunity to explore, he didn’t want to try going up to the second floor if he was just going to pass out up there in one of the dark, abandoned rooms.

            Diane hadn’t yet given up on attacking the racquetball when the sound of the front doorbell alerted them to Dr. Weissman’s arrival.  “Don’t you think you should stop?” Arthur asked, when Diane didn’t slow down.

            “Why?  Edwards will get the door.”

            “Yes, of course, but that’ll be the doctor here to see you,” Arthur pointed out.

            “I don’t need to see him,” Diane insisted.

            “But he clearly doesn’t think so, if he’s come back again.  It’s rude to ignore him like this.”

            Diane sighed deeply, but relented, putting away the equipment and leaving the racquetball court.  As Arthur followed her out into the hall, he saw Edwards coming towards them.  “Ah, there you are, Miss Diane,” he said.  “Your father and Dr. Weissman would like to see you in the dining room.”

            “Daddy’s home early?”

            “Yes, miss.”

            “How odd.”  Diane started walking towards the stairs without waiting for Arthur.  He hesitated a moment, hoping she’d forgotten about him, so he could get some rest.  But she stopped after less than a dozen paces, and turned to scowl at him.  “What are you waiting for?!” she demanded.

            “I’m sure I’d only be in the way…”

            “You’re coming with me,” Diane said, her voice little more than a growl.

            Uncomfortably, Arthur nodded, and followed her.  After what had just happened in the racquetball court, he no longer felt entirely safe trying to stand up to her.  Whatever Dr. Weissman had been attempting in their daily sessions, he had apparently so far failed…unless he was actively trying to destabilise her mental state…

            They found Senator Montenegro and Dr. Weissman in one of the drawing rooms, having a bit of brandy.  “You’re home so early, Daddy!” Diane exclaimed, hurrying over to him.

            The Senator was smiling as he turned to look at his daughter, but as soon as Arthur came into his field of vision, he started scowling.  Arthur wanted to tell him that he didn’t want to be there, either, but he didn’t have the courage.  “Dr. Weissman tells me you’ve been uncooperative the last few sessions,” the Senator said, turning his gaze back to Diane.

            “Oh, no, not at all!” Diane insisted.  “But he was trying to come between us, and I couldn’t allow _that_!” she added, running over to latch onto Arthur’s arm.

            “What is the matter with you?!” Arthur demanded, yanking his arm free.  It was bad enough that she insisted on clinging to him against his will in private, but to keep it up in front of her father?

            “Diane, you are going to go have a session with Dr. Weissman now,” the senator intoned, his eyes narrowed and his face in general a hideous scowling mask.  “Alone.”

            “But…but…but you don’t understand!” Diane whined.

            “Then explain it to me.”

            Diane bit her lip, then ran over to whisper in her father’s ear.  The longer she did so, the angrier the Senator looked.  By the time she was done, the man’s gaze had become positively murderous.  But surely a politician would know better than to actually go and kill someone?  Then again, no one would know if he _did_ murder Arthur.  And surely the Senator had looked into just who his prisoner was, so he would have known that there was no one who would ever come looking for him.  Only the tax man would notice his absence, and since Arthur didn’t make much money, even _he_ wouldn’t care.

            “Very well, my dear,” the Senator said, giving Diane a small smile, “I’ll keep watch over your young man while you’re with the doctor.”

            Diane made a sequence of displeased noises, then nodded.  “All right, Daddy.”

            With that, she and the doctor left the room, and Arthur was left alone with the hyper-conservative politician.  “Ah…actually, I rather need a lie down…” Arthur said uncomfortably.

            “I told Diane I would keep you out of trouble, and I intend to do so,” the Senator barked.  “You will sit quietly in my office while I work.”

            Arthur nodded uneasily, though temporarily filled with a brief hope that the ‘office’ in question would be the one paid for by tax dollars.  That, of course, was a vain hope:  the room the Senator led him to was on the ground floor of the manor, near the armoury.  The proximity of all those guns encouraged Arthur to keep his mouth shut even more than Senator Montenegro’s hate-filled gaze did.  Fortunately, it turned out there was a small fainting couch in the office.  At first, he tried to sit—as he had been instructed—rather than making himself comfortable, but after Arthur had been sitting for a while, his dizziness returned, and he ended up lying down and dozing off, despite how rude that had to seem.


	13. Chapter 13

            In the days following the Senator’s return—when Arthur _wasn’t_ half-concussed by a flying racquet—Arthur made some hesitant attempts to talk to the man, hoping to learn a little about the situation he found himself in.  It was, after all, quite bizarre that Senator Montenegro would want to imprison him in this house along with his mentally disturbed daughter.  His political reputation became more and more imperilled with every minute that Arthur spent in the household, learning more about Diane and her problems.  By this point, if he escaped, he could write an exposé that would utterly ruin the Senator.  And while there was still the very slim chance that the man didn’t know that Arthur was a journalist, he had to know that even the most unobservant fellow could now tell a tale that even the least capable writer could spin into an unspeakable scandal.  So why had the Senator decided to hold him here, with access to all his secrets?  Unless the Senator had staff looking for Arthur’s secrets, intending to use blackmail to keep him quiet?  But Arthur’s few secrets—his former co-workers had had no idea he was bisexual, or that he had run away from home at seventeen, only to end up cohabiting with a rock band that had filled him with drugs and alcohol—were nothing he would sacrifice a story to protect.  In fact, the only one of his secrets that he genuinely wanted to protect was the _reason_ he had run away from home, and there was no way that anyone in the Senator’s employ could have learned that.  Even if Montenegro had contacts in Manchester, Arthur’s father would never be willing to admit to anyone what he had found his worthless son doing that horrible day…

            No matter how many times Arthur tried to engage Senator Montenegro in conversation, the man remained silent and chilly.  Even when Arthur started out trying to butter him up a bit by pretending to agree with one or more or his political positions, the Senator wouldn’t speak to him.  Lent no credibility to his claims to expect Arthur to become his son-in-law, but that was hardly surprising, as at this point Arthur was quite certain that the Senator had no actual intentions of letting Diane marry Arthur.  Which was good, to be sure, but Arthur was more than a little worried about just what the Senator’s plans for him really were.

            Senator Montenegro had been back almost a week before anything changed.  Just a few minutes into Diane’s session with Dr. Weissman, the telephone rang, and the Senator answered it grimly as usual, but his expression changed very quickly.  “Ah, Martin!”  As in Martin Reynolds?  Arthur prayed that wasn’t the case.  “Yes, yes, I can talk, but it isn’t anything—is it classified?” the Senator asked, confirming Arthur’s worst fears, that the President of the United States was on the line, and that Arthur’s unpleasant, unwilling host was on a casual first name basis with him.  “I’m not alone, but I can get rid of him.  Just hold on a minute while I call Edwards.”  The Senator put down on the phone, and pressed an intercom-like button on his desk.

            Edwards soon hurried into the room.  “You needed something, Senator?” he asked.

            “Yes, take—” the Senator gestured towards Arthur with a turning hand “—our young guest here to the kitchen and keep him out of trouble.  I have business to discuss with the President.”

            “Of course, Senator,” Edwards said, bowing slightly.

            Arthur got up without being told, and gladly followed Edwards out of the room, though his journalistic instincts also wanted rather desperately to listen in on the Senator’s classified telephone call.  They went to the kitchen without a word, but once they were there, Arthur bit his lip a moment before asking his question.  “You won’t really be keepin’ me here, will you?”

            “Wasn’t planning on it,” Edwards said, with a chuckle.  “I’ve too much to do to sit here and watch you.  Just keep out of any trouble the Senator will be able to find out about.”

            Arthur promised he would, and hurried back out of the kitchen.  Even though he knew he shouldn’t, he headed straight for the front door of the manor.  This might be his only chance.  If he could get into Dr. Weissman’s car, maybe he could hotwire it and escape.  And if that turned out not to be as easy as the movies made it look, then maybe he could just wait in the back seat and hope that Dr. Weissman wouldn’t notice him lying on the floor of the car.

            When he tried the front door, Arthur found it locked.  There was no bolt to throw; the door had been locked with a key, and could not be opened.  Who designed a door that couldn’t be opened from the inside!?

            Glumly, Arthur resigned himself to a little more exploration of the second floor.  It wasn’t escaping, but it was better than nothing.  He fetched his toolkit from his bedroom on the first floor, then went quickly, quietly up the stairs to the second floor.  Before ten minutes had elapsed, he had the third locked door open.

            Once again, the light switch did nothing, so Arthur aimed his torch into the room.  To his horror, he saw half a dozen torches shine back out at him.  Gasping, he stepped back into the hall and turned the torch off again.  Peering into the room again, Arthur found it to be entirely dark once more  A sudden thought struck him.  If he was right, then he had been a complete idiot to be alarmed at the lights inside the room.

            Flipping on the torch, Arthur pointed it into the room.  Again, torches shone out of the darkness at him.  Arthur waved the torch back and forth.  The torches in the room moved back and forth in sync with his own.

            “I’m a fucking idiot,” he grumbled, stepping into the room.  “They’re just bloody mirrors.”

            His own words sent an alarm through him, and Arthur hurried closer to the nearest mirror, hoping that it was not, in fact, truly bloody.  It didn’t seem to be.  It did, however, seem to cover the entire wall, from floor to ceiling.  In fact, the whole room seemed to be covered with mirrors, segmented periodically, making for all the separate reflections.  A wooden bar ran around the room at a bit lower than waist height—about waist height for a woman of Diane’s height.

            “It’s a dance studio,” Arthur realised, as he shone the light around the unfurnished room again.

            He was about to leave the room when the torchlight caught on the record player.  It looked to be from the ‘70s.  If it was still in working condition, and he could get it down to his room, then he could listen to music without being at the mercy of the radio!

            Arthur hurried across the room to inspect the player.  It was dusty, but seemed to be undamaged.  But now that he was at the player itself, he could see the stack of records beside it.

            On top of the stack, gazing up at him, naked and ethereal, was Brian Slade.

            Even if he wanted to, Arthur could never forget the picture on that record jacket.  But what was it doing here?  If Senator Montenegro was so opposed to rock music’s ‘corrupting’ influence, why wouldn’t he have disposed of a record with such an obviously, intentionally seductive cover?  Particularly when the man on the cover had been purposely arrayed to arouse the desires of the male gaze…

            Carefully, Arthur lifted the record off the stack.  Despite the dust on the record player, the record was not dusty in the least.  Below “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon” was “Lipstick Traces.”  Now that he had it in his hands, Arthur could see that the sleeve was worn at the edges, as if the record had often been handled.  The way most of Arthur’s own records looked, or had looked before he had to sell most of them, at any rate.

            Sorting through the whole stack, Arthur found that all the ones on top were glam rock—all of Brian’s records, most of Curt’s pre-Berlin records, a few from Polly Smalls, and a number of Jack Fairy’s—but below them were a wide assortment of records from the ‘60s, ranging from the Beatles and the Beach Boys to the Doors and Jimi Hendrix.  Not one record from before 1960, however.

            Arthur put the records back in the stack in the same order in which he had found them.  Their lack of dust indicated that _someone_ still came in here.  The player was dusty, so they must not actually _listen_ to the records, but they clearly handled them regularly.  So, loath as we was to do so, he had to leave without the record player.  It might be missed.

            And he might be missed, too, so he decided he’d better go back down to the kitchen, even though he should have plenty of time before Diane finished her session with Dr. Weissman.  It was possible the Senator might come to get him when he got done talking to the President.  After returning his toolkit to his room, Arthur returned to the ground floor and headed into the kitchen.  Edwards gave him a perfunctory smile, but otherwise ignored him as Arthur started making himself a cup of tea.

            He needed something to calm his nerves and let him try to work through everything he had just learned…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I realize that there should only be one reflection from a dance studio's mirrored walls (well, one from each wall, that is), no matter how many individual mirrors were used per wall, but this was a more effective image. Maybe the mirrors are slightly falling off the wall, shifting their angle just sufficiently to make multiple reflections.


	14. Chapter 14

            Arthur watched mournfully as Curt put his jacket back on.  “Do you—can’t I—can’t I come with you?” he asked.  It had been so perfect.  How could it be ending?

            Curt chuckled, giving him a sly grin.  “C’mon, you have any idea what’d happen if I took you to a meeting with a record label?”

            “I don’t understand.  Why would anything be wrong with that?”  Curt and Brian had gone everywhere together, even though Brian was married!

            “Are you even legal?”

            Arthur felt his cheeks heat, and shook his head uncomfortably.  “But…”

            Curt walked over to where Arthur was still sitting on the grubby old mattress, and stroked his hair gently.  “Don’t worry.  I know the Creatures’ number.  I’ll call you.  I promise.”

            Arthur had nodded, fighting not to cry, and watched in silence as Curt left the rooftop.

            Why hadn’t he done what he wanted and run after him?  Why had he been such a fool as to believe a promise so lightly made?  Of _course_ Curt had never called!  Why would he have wasted his time on someone as dull as Arthur?

            But maybe if Arthur had pursued him…maybe he could have persuaded Curt to take him seriously.

            Maybe then he wouldn’t be a prisoner in this awful place.

            No, what point was there in dwelling on the lost past?  He needed to focus on the present, on getting out of here.  Arthur was sure the best route to doing that would be to figure out the story behind the artefacts he had found on the second floor.

            Just who was the Brian Slade fan in this house?  And what had happened to her?

            There were two obvious possibilities—Diane and her mother—but neither seemed quite to fit the bill, nor could either be entirely eliminated.  Diane appeared to be at least three or four years younger than Arthur, and more likely six or seven years younger, making her too young to have owned those clothes.  It was possible, based on the age her mother must have been when she was born, that she might be as old as Arthur, so she _might_ have owned the clothes, but if those things were hers, why did she constantly parrot her father’s anti-rock beliefs?  Trauma only accounted for so much.

            On the other hand, her mother seemed too old to have been the Slade fan.  And yet, that didn’t actually prove that she hadn’t been.  The average fan was between the ages of fifteen and thirty, but there were always outliers who were older, and Mrs. Montenegro could, in theory, have been one of them.  That might have caused some of Senator Montenegro’s distaste for rock music—especially if his late wife had been one of the melodramatic types who would go so far as to take their own life upon losing the idol they adored.  Arthur had never heard anything about anyone killing themselves on hearing that Brian had been shot, but that didn’t mean no one did, just that it was never publicised.  It was hard to believe that kind of behaviour from a married woman, though.  Either way, if Mrs. Montenegro had been a fan of Brian’s, then Diane had to know about it, even if she wasn’t usually ready—or able—to talk about it.

            With that in mind, he set about trying to wheedle the truth out of her.  The first time there was a lull in her constant chatter about her father, Arthur tried to change the subject.  “Can you please stop talkin’ about your bloody father?” he asked.  No point in being subtle about that part, since he’d made the point before.

            “If you don’t appreciate the source of all our luxury, fine!  Be ungrateful!  What do _you_ want to talk about?” Diane snapped.

            “Well…”  Her short-tempered answer had startled him into forgetting all the subtle ways of asking he had planned out.  “How about…er…music.”

            “Music?” Diane repeated, looking at him with wide, perplexed eyes.  “That sounds like a very dull topic.

            How could music ever be dull?  “What kind of music do you listen to that you think it’s dull?”

            “Oh, I hear music the same way anyone else does,” Diane answered.  “In television shows or movies.”

            “That’s not—most people go out of their way to listen to music outside of television programmes,” Arthur assured her.  “You really never even turn on the radio?”

            “Daddy doesn’t like me to listen to music.”

            “And you go along with that?”  Arthur’s father had never liked him to listen to rock music, but that hadn’t stopped him from having a record player and a meagre record collection, not to mention a room plastered in rock posters.

            “Of course!  What sort of ungrateful child disobeys her father?”

            “Were you never a teenager?”  It was hard to imagine a teen who _did_ obey his or her father.

            “What a stupid question!”  Diane slapped him.  Had she always been violent with him, or was this a new development?  Arthur couldn’t think of more than one or two examples before the past forty-eight hours…  “You need to start thinking like a Montenegro,” she went on, scowling at him.  “Daddy won’t approve of me marrying someone who talks about disgraceful things.  That’d be almost as bad as a liberal!”

            “My political views are entirely liberal,” Arthur said, trying to keep his chuckle internal.  Many of his views were far more liberal than those of any political party, to be sure.

            “Well, we’ll have to fix that, won’t we?”

            “Or you could just let me leave.  Simpler, easier and a better outcome.”

            “Do you always give up on love so easily?” Diane asked, her lower lip suddenly trembling as if she was on the verge of tears.  “You have to make sacrifices if you want to earn happiness.”

            Something in that turn of phrase made Arthur’s stomach lurch.  He had an unsettling feeling that if he wasn’t careful, _he_ was going to be the one sacrificed to Diane’s happiness.  That fear kept him quiet for most of the rest of the day.

            The next morning, he couldn’t quite face leaving his room, and stayed in, sitting on the bed and listening to the radio.  'Every Breath You Take' was playing when he suddenly heard Diane’s voice coming from the doorway.  “What a beautiful love song,” she sighed.

            When Arthur got over his shock—he hadn’t heard the door open—he looked at her with disbelief.  She was leaning against the doorframe, her eyes shut, with a blissful expression on her face.

            “I’ve always thought it should be subtitled ‘The Stalker’s Love Song.’  But I’ll admit that the melody is pretty,” Arthur said.  Of course, the unsettlingly obsessive nature of the lyrics didn’t detract from the song in Arthur’s estimation; one of the things that made the Police a band he could appreciate was the intellect and irony written into their lyrics.

            Diane didn’t reply.  She just walked into the room and shut off the radio.  “You shouldn’t be listening to this sort of thing anyway,” she said.  “Now come down to breakfast.”

            There was a hardness to her expression that told Arthur it might not be a good idea to refuse.  And he _was_ rather hungry.  So he put the radio away and complied.  Better not to upset matters when he wasn’t yet ready to deal with the resulting chaos.

            All throughout breakfast, he couldn’t help thinking about it.  If Diane’s mother had lived long enough to become a fan of Brian Slade, then Diane would surely either be unwilling to obey her father’s anti-rock dictums, or she would have some psychological reaction to rock, either in fear or revulsion.  She didn’t seem to show the latter symptoms, and the former obviously wasn’t the case.  But if _she_ had been the fan…how would that have affected her?  For that matter, if she had been the fan, why would she have _stopped_ being a fan?  Just outrage at the way he had betrayed everyone by faking his own death?

            No matter how much he thought about it, it seemed impossible for Diane to have been the one who had owned those clothes and records, but it didn’t seem probable that it was her mother, either.

            There had to have been someone else.

            A young nanny, perhaps.  Or maybe Senator Montenegro had taken a mistress during the early ‘70s, and those were _her_ things.  No, she wouldn’t even have been a ‘mistress,’ not if his wife was already dead; she’d just have been a girlfriend, or even a second wife.  But what happened to her?  If all her things were still in the manor, presumably she had died, but how, and why had the Senator covered everything up in this manner?

            Ultimately, the basic question of why Diane seemed ignorant of things she must logically have known remained the largest problem, no matter how Arthur sought to explain it.

            He needed more information!

            When Dr. Weissman arrived, the Senator once again ordered Edwards to keep watch over Arthur because he had work to do.  But he added “and do a better job this time!” leaving Arthur with the nagging suspicion that the Senator knew about his trip to the second floor the other day.  That being the case, he decided to stay in the kitchen and probe Edwards for information.

            “How long did you say you’ve been workin’ here?” Arthur asked him, settling in at the kitchen table with his tea.

            “About six months,” Edwards said, then cast a suspicious look at him.  “You’re not taking a fancy to me, are you?”

            Arthur laughed.  “No, I promise I’m not.  I’ve got someone I fancy already.  Though I’m beginning to think I’ll never get to see him again.”

            Edwards raised an uncertain eyebrow, then frowned.  “I know you mentioned you’d lost your job recently, but just what _was_ your job?”

            “I was a journalist.  For the _‘Erald_ ,” Arthur answered, almost instinctively.  He’d been working there a long time, after all.  In light of his current situation, it was probably not a good idea to have admitted his professional calling, however.  Edwards was now looking at him with deep suspicion.

            Uncomfortably, Arthur changed the subject to something that seemed entirely innocuous, trying to subtly reassure Edwards that he hadn’t come here looking for a sensational story.


	15. Chapter 15

            Ironically, Diane’s attempt to drown him in the bath might actually have been one of the most useful and liberating things that had happened to Arthur since he was locked up in this place.  As soon as he struggled back to the surface, he got out of the bath and—still dripping wet and in the buff—dragged her bodily out of his room, tossed her into the hall and locked the door, once more jamming a chair underneath the handle to keep her from making her way back inside.

            Diane persisted in banging on his door for hours, pleading with him to let her in.  She alternated between claiming that it had been a joke and that it had been an accident.  Even the biggest fool wouldn’t have fallen for her lines, and Arthur liked to think he was at least a little clever.  Though obviously he wasn’t as clever as he wanted to be, or he’d never have ended up in this manor in the first place.  The banging at his door was only stopped when Senator Montenegro read Diane the riot act—a gratifying experience for Arthur, but also a touch alarming, as there was a weary element in the Senator’s voice, as if he was accustomed to this sort of thing—and sent her to her room for the night.

            Arthur didn’t dare move the chair to open the door until Edwards brought him a breakfast tray the next morning, and even then he was fearful, and forced Edwards to swear a number of binding oaths that Diane absolutely was _not_ in the hallway.  Since Diane was now under orders to remain in her bedroom—though Arthur doubted she would obey those orders for very long, if at all—he reluctantly allowed Edwards to bring in the tray, which was accompanied by the welcome news that Dr. Weissman had been sent for.

            Of course, as soon as Edwards left, Arthur replaced the chair under the door handle.  He wasn’t taking any chances.

            The doorbell split through the silence of the house about ten o’clock, heralding the doctor’s arrival.  Arthur crept to his door and moved the chair aside as quietly as he could, then opened the door a tiny crack.  He couldn’t see anything out of it, but he hoped he’d be able to hear.

            And sure enough, he could.  Dr. Weissman and Edwards were talking quietly as they climbed the stairs to the first floor.  “—just no getting any information out of him,” the doctor was grumbling.

            “He _is_ a politician after all, sir,” Edwards replied, with a laugh.  “Used to guarding his secrets.”

            “Believe me, I know that far better than you do,” Dr. Weissman said, his voice testy, “but how am I supposed to deal with this situation if I don’t understand what set her off?”

            “Ah, is that all you wanted to know?”

            “You know what happened?”

            “No, but I suspect the young man may have told her in no uncertain terms that certain parts of his anatomy were forbidden to the fair sex,” Edwards said.  How naïve he was if he thought something that simple would get through to Diane!

            Dr. Weissman laughed.  “She picked a fruit this time, did she?”  This time?  “Well, that may explain a few things.”

            “This time?” Edwards repeated, his voice not nearly so shaky or concerned as Arthur’s would have been.

            “What woman her age could never have fallen in love before?” Dr. Weissman replied.  An evasion if Arthur ever heard one, but Edwards seemed to accept it.

            “Oh, before I forget!” Edwards exclaimed, after a few moments’ pause.  “Will you be staying for luncheon, sir?”

            “Since I cancelled all my appointments for the day, I may as well.  I suspect I’ll still be with her by noon, anyway.”

            “Very good, sir.”  Edwards’ reply was so quiet that Arthur could barely hear it, as they were now moving down the corridor towards Diane’s room.

            Figuring that was the last good information he was going to get, Arthur shut the door again, and waited for Edwards’ footsteps to return, and head down the stairs, so he could go upstairs and explore.  At least now he knew he would have a two hour window, instead of the usual single hour.

            It wasn’t long before the footsteps in the hall grew louder, but eventually Arthur realised that they were far too loud:  they were coming right towards his door.  Hastily, Arthur replaced the chair under the handle, and moved over to the bed as quickly as he could while still remaining relatively quiet.

            The steps stopped outside his door, and there was soon a polite knock.  “Will you be joining us downstairs for luncheon, young sir?” Edwards’ voice asked.

            “Not bloody likely!” Arthur called out in reply.

            “I thought as much, but I had to ask.  I’ll bring you a tray up after the others are served, shall I?” Edwards suggested.

            “That’d be lovely, thanks,” Arthur said.  “Unless you’d be willin’ to let me out of this madhouse.”

            “After last night, I’m sure the Senator is concerned that you might do something rash and stain his career,” Edwards said, his voice a little hesitant.  “I’m sure he’ll come to see reason soon.  Perhaps…”

            “Perhaps what?” Arthur asked, getting off the bed and moving closer to the door.  “You think you can talk him into letting me go?”

            “I’m sure he’s afraid that you might tell the press about what’s happened here in the past month.  Perhaps if you had some sort of secret you could share with him—something that would let him know you had no intention of blackmailing him…”

            “I don’t have any secrets.”

            “Really?” Edwards sounded surprised.  “You tell everyone you’re a pouf?”

            “I’m not a—yes, I don’t go about tellin’ people I like to sleep with men, but it’s not a secret of the kind you’re talkin’ about.  I wouldn’t do much tryin’ to hide it, because it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

            Edwards made a disappointed noise, but didn’t answer further, and soon Arthur could hear his footsteps receding down the hall.

            After everything had been deathly quiet outside the door for a good five minutes, Arthur moved the chair aside, grabbed his toolkit, and headed up to the second floor.  Blackmail.  He had barely even _thought_ of that since he’d gotten so caught up in the mystery.  But if he could find some kind of proof up there, proof that the Senator was doing—or had done—something highly illegal, maybe Arthur could blackmail the man into letting him go.  That would have the unfortunate side effect of having to let Montenegro get away with whatever it was, but if it would buy Arthur his freedom, then…

            As he made his way down the darkened hallway, Arthur realised there were just two more locked doors on the floor:  one more side door, and the larger one at the end of the hall.  Seeing that, he couldn’t help but go straight for the one at the end of the hall.  If this was a movie, that would be where the most incriminating piece of evidence would be hidden.  It would be the cobwebbed bedchamber where the desiccated corpse rested, holding a rose in its hand, with only a depression and a stray hair to show that Miss Emily laid down beside it every night.  Or it would be filled with body parts in jars, or dead bodies stored in freezers, or—

            After a moment shuddering in revulsion, Arthur decided to stop thinking about what might be in there, and just open the damned door.

            It was no more difficult to open than any of the others, and this time the lights hadn’t gone, so he was able to turn off his torch and look around properly.  The room seemed entirely innocuous.  Trunks, boxes, armoires and suitcases.  Random storage.

            The armoires seemed most suspicious, so Arthur opened them first.  Men’s clothing.  Probably belonged to the Senator, though perhaps from his younger days, since there were jeans and T-shirts.  Not to mention the occasional hideous checked flannel.

            The suitcases were all empty, ragged and cheap.  Possibly they had been Edwards’ suitcases?  It was hard to imagine someone from an old money family like Montenegro—as close as any American came to being nobility—ever buying or using those suitcases.

            The trunks were old steamer trunks, some stamped with travel stickers from the turn of the century.  They looked like the sort of thing that would have been on the _Titanic_.  Most of them were empty, but a few had mouldy old scrapbooks filled with tintypes and Daguerreotypes, and one of them had nineteenth century clothes inside, adorned with handmade lace and other expensive old fineries.  Fascinating stuff, but hardly what Arthur was looking for.

            The boxes’ contents weren’t anything to excite suspicion on their own.  Books and records mostly.  Anywhere else, they wouldn’t make Arthur bat an eye.  But here?

            Who in this household ever read Zane Grey Westerns?  Who in this household would have listened to Country-Western music?  Who in this household spoke German and listened to polkas?  Spanish books and flamenco music?

            After staring into the boxes in slowly growing apprehension for far too long, Arthur went back to the armoires and looked at the clothes again with a more careful eye.

            The Senator couldn’t have worn T-shirts in his younger days:  they weren’t commonplace until the late fifties, when he was already a veteran of the Korean War and had started on his political career.

            Arthur had fit into Senator Montenegro’s pyjamas perfectly.  So why were the flannel shirts for a man much wider of torso, and some of the trousers for a man a foot shorter than he was?

            How many men had owned the things in this room?

            They couldn’t have belonged to former servants.  They’d have taken their books, clothes and records with them.

            What had happened to the men who owned these things?

            Arthur’s hands were shaking as he put everything back exactly as he found it.  If anything was out of place and someone found it…

            When he got back to his room, he jammed the chair back under the door handle, and reinforced it with everything he could find.

            He didn’t want his few things to end up in that room.  He _had_ to find a way out of here.

            But he was going to have to be more careful from now on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it took me this long to catch up to the prologue.
> 
> No one has ever called me efficient. :P
> 
> (Would it be out of line to say that this may be my favorite pre-Curt chapter? (Yes, Curt *does* show up eventually...))


	16. Chapter 16

            Since realising that _someone_ in that house truly was mental—and dangerous at that—Arthur continued refusing to leave his room, except at meal times.  It was made clear to him on the second day of his withdrawal that Edwards would no longer be permitted to bring meals up to him, or he would have stayed inside entirely.

            The strange thing about these meals was that Diane didn’t seem to understand why he was keeping himself locked up.  She constantly made comments about hoping he would get better soon, as if he was staying in his room because he was sick.  And Senator Montenegro was actively encouraging her to believe that, with the added implication that whatever Arthur had was contagious.

            After three or four days, that encouraged Arthur to leave his room during Dr. Weissman’s visit.  He went straight to the nearest telephone—naturally, there wasn’t one in his room, but all the other bedrooms had them—and once again thought of calling the police.  But he still didn’t have any proper proof that anything illegal had happened.  After all, they could easily claim those things had belonged to old friends, former tenants—as if the Montenegros had ever rented out rooms!—or to other family members, or even to the Senator or Diane while experiencing a brief interest in something unusual.  Not to mention that they could probably easily dispose of the items while the police were obtaining the necessary warrant.

            There wasn’t any point in trying to call any of the paltry number of people he used to think were his friends, either, not after they had so utterly failed to help him before.  There was only one person who seemed like he might genuinely be helpful.

            So Arthur dialled the number for the _Herald_ ’s office.  When the main desk picked up, he asked to speak to Lou, and was soon transferred to the editor’s secretary, Sally.  “I need to speak to Lou,” he told her.  “It’s really important.”

            “Is that Arthur?” she asked.

            “Wha—yes, but—”

            “It’s been such a long time, honey!” she gushed.  “The office has been so boring without your pretty face to liven things up!  When are you coming back?”

            Coming back?  From being fired?  Since when was _that_ an option?  “Please, I really need to talk to Lou.”  No point in getting angry at her.  Lou might not have wanted to admit that he had caved to pressure and fired someone who hadn’t actually done anything wrong.

            “He’s out right now,” Sally told him.  “But you know, we’ve all been worried about you, dearheart.”  Even from a woman in her sixties, ‘dearheart’ was an obnoxious nickname that made the hairs on the back of Arthur’s neck stand up.  “Your phone’s been disconnected, and the mail comes back undeliverable.”

            “Yes, I got evicted from my flat,” Arthur sighed.  “When will Lou be back?  This is a real emergency.”

            “I’m not sure.  I’ll tell him you called.  But where are you staying?  What’s your number there?”

            “Ah…I…I don’t really have a phone where I am.  This is—this is a borrowed line.”  That was an understatement, to be sure.  “Look, tell Lou that…that I’ve gone to the black mountains, against my will, and I think my life’s in danger.”  He couldn’t be sure Lou would realise what he meant, but…what else could he say?  If he was blunt…who knows who else might get the message.  Tommy Stone’s guardians had somehow learned about his Brian Slade story, after all.  They might learn about this the same way, and since Montenegro was probably one of those guardians…

            “The black mountains?” Sally repeated.  “Lou said you’d gone travelling, but where’s that?”

            “Just tell him.”

            “All right, but you be careful!  I don’t know what’s going on, but remember that no story’s worth your life,” Sally said, that grandmotherly quality in her voice coming out even more strongly than usual.  It made Arthur feel rather guilty:  it turned out there _were_ people who would notice when he disappeared off the face of the planet, because his editor hadn’t had the spine to tell anyone Arthur had been fired, and wasn’t on vacation or travelling for a story, or whatever he had claimed.

            “Don’t worry,” Arthur said, trying to sound confident.  “I plan on stayin’ alive no matter what.”

            “You’d better!  And do come back soon.  We all miss you around here.”

            “Yeah…just as soon as I can…”  What else could he say?  She sounded like she really meant it.  Why bother hurting her by telling her that he wouldn’t be permitted to return no matter what he did?

            Arthur quickly ended the phone call and hurried back to his own room, locking the door behind him.  It wouldn’t do to be caught outside.  Imagine if Diane got her claws into him again!

 

*******

 

            Arthur had spent nearly a week in isolation in that bedroom—so long that he was starting to see purple even when he ventured outside those lavender walls—by the time Senator Montenegro looked at him with deep suspicion at dinner one evening.  Over the last three days, Arthur had checked every unoccupied bedroom on the first floor, and found that every one of their telephones had been removed.  So when he found the Senator staring at him like that, Arthur assumed he was about to be confronted over the matter of his sole outbound telephone call.  Perhaps Lou had understood his ludicrously cryptic message, and set wheels in motion?

            “What did you say your name was again?” the Senator asked him.  “Stuart, wasn’t it?”

            Arthur was too flabbergasted by the question to manage to answer it.  All he could do was nod, probably with a blank, idiotic expression on his face.

            “But what was your first name?”

            “It’s Charlie,” Diane said.

            “Are you plannin’ on _beheading_ me?!” Arthur exclaimed instinctively, putting a hand to his throat.  The fact that his middle name was Charles had given the bullies at his middle school endless fun after they had covered the fate of Charles I in history class…

            Diane just looked at him with blank confusion, but her father laughed grimly.

            “My name’s Arthur,” he told the Senator.  Let there be no confusion on that!  Even if the man only wanted it to be sure his tombstone was correct.

            “So this is where you disappeared to,” the man muttered under his breath.  Or that was what Arthur thought he said.

            For the rest of dinner, only Diane was talking—jabbering on about her day playing racquetball against…herself?—which gave Arthur plenty of time to think about that little exchange with her father.  If Arthur was right about what he had said—and he was pretty sure he was—then whoever had been tasked with protecting Tommy Stone’s secret had been actively searching for him all this time, and that had come to the Senator’s attention, as an administrator of the Committee for Cultural Renewal.

            So getting him fired _wasn’t_ enough to satisfy them?

            Arthur wasn’t even sure if his life was in more or less danger this way.  It probably didn’t change much, really.  He was dangling over the precipice, and one wrong move would land him on the chopping block, just like near-namesake.

 

*******

 

            Having found a calendar in a drawer in the green bedroom, Arthur was sitting at the table in his own room, trying to figure out just what day it was when Edwards knocked at the door.  “Sorry to disturb you, young sir,” he said, “but the Senator asked me to inform you that you’ll have to dress for dinner.  Suit and tie.”

            “Why?” Arthur asked.

            “He has company coming.”

            “Maybe I’d better just stay in here, then,” Arthur said.  “I can do without dinner for one night.”

            “No, the Senator insists that you should be present.  As Miss Diane’s fiancé, it is your duty to greet family guests.”

            “I’m not her bloody fiancé.”

            “I’m not going to lose my job by arguing with my employer,” Edwards replied.

            “I suppose I can see your point,” Arthur admitted.  “All right, I’ll wear a tie.”  Though he hardly relished the idea of having a handy strangulation device rigged up neatly around his neck.  Who could know who might try to take advantage of it!

            Once Edwards was gone again, Arthur returned to his calculations.  It was hard to be sure how many days it had been, but he was fairly sure it was around the 8th or 9th of April.  With a resigned sigh, he wondered how the election was going.  The chances of Reynolds failing to earn the Republican nomination seemed non-existent, but maybe the Democrats would be able to produce a candidate capable of preventing him from being re-elected?  Based on the state of things as of 1st March, he rather doubted it, unfortunately…

            Looking back on everything that had happened to him since losing his job, Arthur bitterly counted the cash in his wallet, the money he had raised for his rent.  It probably _was_ enough to buy a low-end ticket to London.  If he hadn’t been such an idiot, he’d be back home now, a houseguest with Ray or Malcolm, penniless but safe and free.  Why hadn’t he thought of that before he’d ended up in this mess?  Was his dignity really worth more than his life?

            Then again, it wasn’t just about giving up and fleeing home with his tail tucked between his legs.  It was also about who was here in America, and maybe would never be in England again.

            If he had gone back home, Arthur might have lost all chances of ever seeing Curt again.  To give up like that so soon after realising just what Curt had really meant to him all this time…how could he do that?  His dignity wasn’t worth his life, but Curt was.  Curt was worth any price.

            That was why he _had_ to find a way to get out of here safely.


	17. Chapter 17

            Dinner was served a bit later than usual that night.  The guest was running late, Edwards explained, when he came to tell Arthur that dinner would be served shortly.  It took a lot of work to keep his hands from shaking as he put his tie around his neck.  The knot was clumsy and unattractive, but Arthur’s mind was too much on other things to care.

            Though he would be finding out as soon as he reached the dining room, Arthur couldn’t help speculating on who the guest was.  Of the many theories he had come up with all day, he couldn’t help assuming it was someone from the Committee for Cultural Renewal, or at least associated with them.  It was, after all, only a few days since Arthur had stupidly reminded Senator Montenegro what his name was, and the man had clearly recognised the name.  This sudden visit and the demand of Arthur’s presence at dinner couldn’t be coincidental.  The only real question was if the guest was someone with a public role—someone else from Congress, perhaps—or someone behind the scenes that Arthur wouldn’t know.

            Arthur was on his way down the stairs when the doorbell rang.  Edwards answered it with alacrity, and for a moment Arthur was blinded by the sunlight reflecting off the sequined white suit of the man entering the house.

            While he _was_ connected to the Committee for Cultural Renewal, Tommy Stone was quite literally the last person that Arthur was expecting to see walk into the house.  He looked, surprisingly, almost as uncomfortable about being there as Arthur was.  Instead of the usual smug smile, his mouth was a grim line, and his skin looked shiny, as if he was sweating, despite the cool spring weather outside.  Still, when he turned his head to look at Edwards, he smiled none the less.  “Looking good, Edwards,” he said.

            “Very kind of you, I’m sure, Mr. Stone.  The Senator is waiting in the dining room with Miss Diane.”

            Tommy’s smile twitched and faltered at the mention of Diane.  His eyes swept across the room, and lighted on Arthur as he was reaching the bottom of the stairs.  His new expression was of a type that Arthur knew all too well, though he hadn’t seen its like in years.  For all that Tommy Stone claimed to be exclusively heterosexual, Brian Slade’s bisexual nature clearly still lingered inside; he was practically licking his lips.  Revulsion fought to win out over adolescent fantasies of how Brian might have reacted to Arthur ten years ago, if things had gone differently…

            Tommy moved towards him, the smug smile returned to his lips as he held out his hand towards Arthur.  “And you are?”

            “Arthur…”  His voice was so quiet that even Arthur had trouble hearing it.

            “This is Miss Diane’s fiancé,” Edwards interjected.

            The smile left Tommy’s face immediately, replaced with a bitter scowl, and he turned towards Edwards, who flinched back a bit from the angry expression.  “Straight into the dining room, you said?”

            “Yes, Mr. Stone.”

            Tommy turned on his heel and started stalking off towards the dining room without another word.  As soon as he was in the next room, Arthur hurried over to Edwards’ side.  “How often does _he_ come here?” he whispered.

            “This is the fourth time he’s been since I entered the Senator’s employ,” Edwards replied.  “Can’t say I care for his music, myself.”

            “No, neither do I,” Arthur agreed.  Not the music of his current career, anyway.

            Unsure what else to do, Arthur headed into the dining room himself.  Diane stood in front of Tommy, an uneasy kind of a smile playing across her lips, happiness, even relief, constantly replaced with terror and anguish.  Senator Montenegro was watching them with a grim, determined satisfaction, his mouth set in a hard line, his brows furrowed together.

            “Shall I serve up now?” Edwards asked from behind Arthur.

            “Of course,” the Senator snapped, then took his seat at the head of the table without another word.

            Diane sat down beside her father, and gestured Arthur over to sit next to her.  Ordinarily, he would have refused, but it had to be better than sitting next to Tommy.  Tommy reluctantly took the other seat beside the Senator, opposite from Diane, though he refused to look at her, his gaze alternating between his host and Arthur.

            As the Senator started to tell Tommy about a concert that the President wanted held at one of his campaign fund-raisers, Arthur found himself praying that he would not be required to talk during dinner.  Tommy obviously hadn’t seen his face after the concert, but he’d certainly heard his voice.  And—as Arthur was always being reminded—his accent was very unusual in this country; even if Tommy didn’t recognise his voice, he’d surely recognise his accent.

            “So, you’ll be performing as Martin wants, yes?” the Senator eventually asked.

            “You’ll have to talk to Shannon,” Tommy replied.  “She keeps my schedule for me.  I don’t like to bother about the petty details.”  He glanced over at Arthur, then looked back at Montenegro.  “How long has this been going on?” he asked, gesturing at Diane and Arthur.  Diane giggled nauseatingly, and clutched at Arthur’s thigh under the table, forcing him to swat her hand away, hard.

            “Not very long at all, actually,” the Senator lied astonishingly.  “Which reminds me, you have never fully accounted for yourself, young man,” he said, turning to look at Arthur.

            “Me?”  How the hell did he figure _Arthur_ needed to ‘account for himself’?

            “Yes, you.  What did you say you do for a living?”

            Arthur scowled.  The damned man was _baiting_ him!  Trying to force him to talk, to ensure that Tommy would realise who he was!  “Nothing,” he said.  Maybe if he said as little as possible, he could put off Tommy figuring out the truth.  It’d be useful for him to know it eventually, but not yet!  Arthur somehow had to get him alone first…

            “Yes, but what did you do _before_ you quit your job to help my daughter run the estate when I’m in Washington?”

            A ridiculous story.  And—to his credit—Tommy’s disbelief was written plainly on his face.  But that didn’t change anything.  Arthur was going to _have_ to talk.  He was going to have to let Tommy find out the truth too soon, greatly reducing the possibility that he’d have the _chance_ to talk to him alone.

            “I didn’t quit,” Arthur said.  “I was fired for upsettin’ one of your Committee mates.”  Arthur smiled grimly.  “Until that happened, I was a journalist.”

            Tommy’s face was momentarily overwhelmed by a look of bitter hatred the likes of which Arthur had only seen on the villains in particularly unsubtle movies.  Then he managed to force it back down again, and a cold sneer took its place.  He certainly knew who Arthur was _now_.  And he was probably glad that Arthur had suffered this cruel fate.

            “What sort of journalist were you?” Tommy asked, a malicious humour in his tone.  “Other than one who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.”

            “Mostly, I covered politics,” Arthur told him, meeting his gaze with as much confidence as he could muster.  The knowledge that someone in the room was almost certainly a murderer did not make that easier, and he worried that his voice might be shaking as he went on.  “Before I got the boot, I was workin’ on a story about how the Thought Police were tryin’ to crush the human spirit with especially banal pop music.”

            Tommy looked rather like his hair might ignite, and yet he wasn’t the one who began screeching at Arthur.  That was Diane.  “I told you, Daddy’s work isn’t like that!  Why don’t you ever _listen_ to me?!”

            “Maybe because you’re bloody deafening me by screamin’ in my ear!” Arthur snapped back at her, covering his ears against her high-pitched shrieks.

            Surprisingly, the anger faded away from Tommy’s face, and he laughed.  “It must be quite serious; you sound married already.”

            “Don’t you get along with your wife anymore?” Diane asked, a confusion misting her features.

            “I’m single,” Tommy said, adjusting his suit nervously.

            “Did you get divorced?”

            “Ask anyone—Tommy Stone has never been married!”

            Even as Arthur fought to contain his laughter, he reflected that there had to be some significance in Diane’s certainty that Tommy had once been married.  Even if she wasn’t consciously aware that he was Brian Slade, she plainly had that knowledge at some unconscious level.  Of course, since her conscious level of knowledge almost certainly didn’t even know who Brian Slade was, it might be difficult ascertaining exactly how she found out.  And—more importantly—it would be dangerous to try.  Better to escape and then research the family from the safety of the New York Public Library.  Or possibly a library in Toronto or London, where neither Montenegro nor the Committee for Cultural Renewal would have any power.

            “You must excuse my daughter’s confusion,” the Senator said, with a grim chuckle, “but you _do_ spend so much of your time with that lady manager of yours that it’s no wonder people think you’re married to her.”

            Tommy almost looked embarrassed by that.  “Yes…well…that…only makes sense…”

            After that, the subject of conversation changed to discussing the food in uncomfortable detail.  Apparently, no one at the table wanted to talk about marriage.  As the dinner plodded on interminably, Arthur kept reaching into the pocket of his trousers and fondling the pin Curt had given him.  He had contemplated wearing it to dinner as a tie tack, and it had only been the fear of having it taken away by Diane or her father that had held him back.  It was hard to imagine, though, what might have happened if he _had_ worn it!  It seemed inconceivable that Tommy wouldn’t recognise the pin:  Arthur could vividly remember seeing it sparkling at Brian Slade’s throat back in 1972 when he proudly informed the world that he was bisexual.  For Tommy to learn that Curt had given it away to someone else…who knows what he might do!

            Soon after the dinner dishes were cleared away and the pudding was being brought out, Tommy announced that he needed to visit the lavatory, and excused himself from the table.  Arthur waited a couple of minutes, then similarly excused himself, hurrying to the hallway that led to the nearest loo.  It was a very narrow little hall; the perfect place for an ambush.

            He didn’t have to wait long before Tommy came back out, mopping at his face with a handkerchief.  The cloth was dropped to the floor when he saw Arthur waiting for him, blocking the hallway.  “If you wanted a toilet, there are a dozen others in this house,” Tommy said coldly.

            “No, I wanted to talk to you alone, Brian,” Arthur said.  May as well just lay all his cards out on the table.  It wasn’t as though Tommy thought he didn’t know the truth.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tommy insisted.

            Arthur shook his head.  “It’s a pity, you know.  I used to look up to you so much, and you threw everything away—not just your career, but the affections of all your fans.”

            “There’s nothing you could say that I haven’t heard before.”

            “Not about that, no,” Arthur agreed, “but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

            Tommy sighed deeply.  “It may shock you to learn this, but I really don’t care.  Now get out of my way.”

            “No.”  Arthur shook his head.  “Not until you’ve agreed to do what I want.”

            An arched eyebrow was followed by a smug smile.  “I don’t do that anymore.”

            “Don’t flatter yourself—I may have fancied Brian Slade when I was young, but Tommy Stone disgusts me.”  Arthur smiled as Tommy’s grin faded.  “Tomorrow, you’re goin’ to hire a private investigator to look into Diane Montenegro, and all her previous ‘fiancés.’  I’ve reason to believe several men were lured into this house by that woman, and I don’t think a single one walked back out again.”

            “And what makes you think I care?”  From the slight tremor in his voice, Tommy was more affected by the idea than he wanted to admit.

            “Nothing.  This is blackmail, plain and simple.  But it’s fair.  You got me fired, landin’ me in this mess, so you’re goin’ to pay the bill.  You do that, and I won’t tell anyone your secret.”

            “I suppose you expect me to get you out of here, too.”

            “I wouldn’t trust you with that,” Arthur said flatly.  “I’ll get myself free.  You just pay the private detective, and ‘ave him bring me the results when I get out, or send them to my former editor at the _‘Erald_.  Then your secret will be safe.  At least, safe from _me_ tellin’ anyone about it.”

            “Or I could let you stay here in complete isolation, and let the secret die with you.”

            “Except that I’ve told several people about it already, and if anything happens to me, they’ll go public with it.”  In retrospect, Arthur wished he had thought of doing that.  Maybe he could call someone now and ask them to go public if he wasn’t able to escape?

            “I’ve a feeling you’re lying,” Tommy said, squinting at him in the low light of the hallway, “but perhaps it’s only right that—”  He stopped talking immediately as Edwards arrived in the hallway.

            “No trouble is there, sirs?” Edwards asked, looking at them with concern.

            “Yes, in fact, there is,” Tommy replied bitterly.  “This fellow is a loon.  He thinks I had him fired, and now—”

            “Say, Edwards,” Arthur interrupted, before Tommy could say anything that might actually influence the butler against him, “was that gay brother of yours a fan of glam rock at all?”

            Edwards chuckled.  “My, yes.  Pretty boys all ponced up, singing and shaking their half-clad bodies around.  How could he and his friends resist such a spectacle?”

            “Bet they’d all love to know where Brian Slade is now, wouldn’t they?”

            “I’m sure so,” Edwards agreed.

            “Shall I tell him?” Arthur asked Tommy, with an innocent smile on his face.

            “All right, you’ve made your bloody point,” Tommy growled.  “Edwards, please give me a moment or two alone with the lad.”

            “Of course, Mr. Stone.”  Obediently, he withdrew from the hall, leaving them alone in the dim light.

            “You’re probably quite proud of yourself,” Tommy surmised.

            “I just want to get out of this alive.  If I can also prevent anyone else from suffering this fate, all the better.”

            “You’re a reprehensible excuse for a human being.”

            Arthur chuckled.  “You bein’ the expert at that, if you think so, I suppose I must be.”

            Tommy snarled at him, then shoved his way past.

            As he followed the disgruntled star back to the dining room, Arthur had to hope that he really was going to hire the private detective.  But if he didn’t…well, there had to be _some_ news organisation out there that was interested in the current whereabouts of Brian Slade.  Even if he had to file the story anonymously to get them willing to touch it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course, I'm sure Arthur was the only person surprised by the identity of the visitor...but I had fun with this chapter regardless. :)


	18. Chapter 18

            The day after Tommy Stone’s visit to the manor, Arthur was surprised to hear a knock on his door mid-afternoon.  By this point in his withdrawal, even Diane seemed to have grown to accept that he wasn’t willing to come out of his room except to eat, and had given up trying to convince him to come out.  If only she’d just give up and let him out of this mad house!

            “I suppose you’re in there?”  It was Dr. Weissman’s voice.

            “Yes, I am.”  What else could he say?

            “I understand why you’ve withdrawn into seclusion like this, but I believe you are damaging the young lady’s mental wellbeing.  If you do not resume spending time with her, her state will never normalise.”

            “If you think there was anything normal about the way she was before, then you and I have very different ideas of what that word means,” Arthur retorted.  “The woman tried to fucking _kill_ me!”

            “I do understand that,” Dr. Weissman said, in a voice that could only be described as ‘tired,’ “but I can assure you that it won’t happen again, so long as you maintain a friendly, non-threatening air of mild cooperation.”

            “How long ‘ave you been her doctor?” Arthur asked.

            “That’s really none of your business, young man.”

            “Was that what you told her last victim?  To maintain a friendly, non-threatening air of mild cooperation?  Is that what you’ll tell the next poor sap, too, after she’s killed me and fed my body to those bloody dogs?”

            Dr. Weissman produced an uncomfortable chuckle.  “That’s quite an imagination you have, young man.  You’re not in any danger, I promise.”

            “I’m not about to trust my life to such an easily made promise.”  After all, there’d be no way for Arthur to remind him of the broken promise after he’d been killed!

            “Surely you can see how absurd your behaviour is,” Dr. Weissman said in a gentle voice.  Arthur suspected it was the same patronising tone he used with his uncooperative patients.  “Diane is a little slip of a girl, and you’re quite a large fellow.  What could she possibly do to you?”

            “I’m tall, but I’m not bulky,” Arthur pointed out.  “And even a hulking brute can be taken by surprise by someone half his size.  Besides, there’s a whole room full of guns on the ground floor.  Size doesn’t matter to a bullet.”

            The other man sighed so loudly that it was easily audible through the door.  “Will you at least deign to spend time with her so long as you aren’t _alone_ with her?”

            Arthur knew it was a mistake.  He knew that what he needed to do right now was simply design an escape plan.  But he might lose his mind if he had to spend one more day cooped up in that little room, with very little to do other than listen to the radio and read the same half dozen unappealing books over and over again.  “All right.  But the minute I’m alone with her, I’m leavin’.”  If only he could _really_ leave!

            “Excellent.  Come with me, and we’ll give Diane the good news together.”

            Arthur didn’t see it as ‘good news’ in any way, but he obligingly moved the chair aside and reached for the door handle.  As he did so, he realised he was wearing his own clothes, rather than the ones Diane had had made for him.  If anyone saw him in them, they’d know he had been exploring the second floor.  “Ah, hang on just a minute.  I’m still in my jimjams.”

            “Your whats?”

            Arthur sighed.  “Pyjamas.”  As he changed clothes, he reflected bitterly on the ignorance of the average American as to what the language they were supposedly speaking was _actually_ like.

 

*******

 

            The sole advantage of having been forcibly returned to spending time with Diane—who now seemed visibly unhinged to Arthur’s eyes—was that he once again had access to the morning newspapers, and televised news.  The news wasn’t good, but keeping up with it was important all the same.

            Tommy Stone’s visit had been on Monday.  That Friday—ominously enough, Friday the 13th—in one of his campaign speeches, President Reynolds claimed that he had developed the perfect plan to put a stop to the spread of AIDS permanently.  Given Reynolds’ generally homophobic nature, Arthur was quite certain he could guess the basic thrust of that so-called plan, but he was curious to see how the rest of the world reacted to it.

            Based on Reynolds’ reactions over the weekend as the media clamoured to find out just what the plan was, he really hadn’t expected to be pressed for details.  Monday morning, they were still at the breakfast table when Senator Montenegro received an urgent phone call from the White House.  As a result, it was poor Edwards who was playing chaperone/bodyguard between breakfast and the arrival of Dr. Weissman.

            The moment Diane was gone to her room with the doctor, Edwards resumed his duties, and Arthur was finally alone.  He had a brief listen at the door to the Senator’s office, and could hear him still talking on the phone.  Apparently, the President hadn’t had any sort of plan at all.  Or not one he felt would get him re-elected, anyway.

            The important thing was that Arthur now had an hour to himself.  It seemed pointless, but there _was_ still that last locked door on the second floor.  Perhaps it would contain the truly incriminating evidence he needed to blackmail Montenegro into letting him go.  As he climbed the stairs with his toolkit, Arthur felt it was ludicrous to expect anything so perfect, but in the end he just couldn’t stand the idea of letting that one last door go unopened.  Even if it wouldn’t get him out or explain everything, it might at least fill in some gaps.  And even if it didn’t, opening it would certainly reassure him that he hadn’t overlooked anything crucial.  It would eat at him the rest of his life if he didn’t open that door…

            The door was opened easily enough, but once again the light switch did nothing.  In sweeping the room with his torch, though, Arthur saw a floor lamp in one corner; thankfully, that _did_ work.  The room was a second library, with a cosy chair, a fireplace, and even a television set that appeared to be at least ten years old, accompanied by one of the massive, clunky early video recording devices.  Shutting the door behind him—and praying it wouldn’t lock again!—Arthur switched on the television and the recorder.  A tape was already in it, and he soon had it playing.

            It was a recording of one of Brian Slade’s appearances on American television.

            The other tapes in the room contained a number of other early ‘70s television programmes featuring pop singers of various sorts, most on major variety programmes, but some from local access programming.  For the most part, Arthur felt no need to watch the recordings, but he couldn’t help himself when he found a programme on which Curt performed one of his songs.  It was wonderful to see an unfamiliar performance, but it was actually a little painful to watch:  Curt was so high during the performance that he was barely able to complete the song.  If the date written on the cassette was accurate, then that appearance had been about a month before his fateful meeting with Brian Slade early in the summer of 1972.  Perhaps that rather disastrous television appearance had been what caused his previous manager to abandon him, making him realise he needed to end his addiction to heroin…?

            Upbraiding himself for wasting much too much time on the tapes, Arthur set aside the tape with the recording of Curt, and started scanning the bookshelves in the room, looking for anything that might explain whose things were in these several rooms.  About half the books on the shelves were the same kind of trashy romance novels he had found in the drawers in the lavender bedroom.  Most of the rest were quick-and-dirty books written about rock stars—at least three unauthorised biographies of Brian Slade—accompanied by music magazines from 1971 to 1974.  Arthur pulled several of the books down off the shelf and set them with the tape of Curt’s early performance;  the biographies of Brian he pulled because he thought there might be something edifying about them, and the rest seemed like they would have pictures of Curt.

            Near the chair, however, Arthur noticed a puffy-covered book with no visible writing on the spine or the cover.  It looked to have started life as a photo album, but he couldn’t be sure, because most of the cover was obscured by stickers, among which Brian Slade’s cherries were predominant.  Arthur rather hoped it was a scrapbook filled with pertinent magazine and newspaper articles that would somehow explain exactly what was going on.

            Instead, it was just a photo album.

            The pictures inside, at first, seemed dull.  The exterior of the Montenegro house, scenery about New York and Boston, and a truly unappealing photo of Senator Montenegro lounging by the pool in his swimming costume.  Arthur started flipping through the pages hastily after seeing that one, terrified of seeing anything more in _that_ vein.

            Then he started coming across Polaroids taken at rock concerts.  Some of them were of the performers, other members of the audience, or of Mrs. Montenegro.  But something was off.  The nose was clearly that of Diane’s mother, not Diane herself, but she didn’t look any older than in the wedding portrait, even though the Senator by the pool had looked much older—not more than fifteen or so years younger than he looked now.

            A few pages later, there was a group of Polaroids of Brian Slade on stage and backstage.  Diane’s mum had gone backstage to meet Brian?  The venue was a television programme that was filmed in New York City, which had been Brian’s first performance in America.  Mrs. Montenegro must have used her husband’s pull as a Senator to be able to take these pictures, but why?  There were Polaroids of him and the Venus in Furs together backstage, as well as others featuring just Brian and Mrs. Montenegro.

            On the next page, Arthur found photographs of Brian in the Montenegro dining hall, and in that sickeningly pink bedroom, lounging on the bed, posing seductively for the camera.  There were also photos of him and Mrs. Montenegro sitting together on the bed.

            As much as Arthur prayed that Mandy was the one who took those photos, and that nothing had happened _beyond_ a few pictures, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it.  Those photos of Brian and Diane’s mum together had the awkward look of a photo where everyone was uncomfortably holding their pose, waiting for a timer to take the picture.

            After those pages, Brian vanished from the album—only to be expected, since he had only spent about a week in New York, if Arthur remembered correctly, and most of that time was taken up by Curt—and after a while photos began to appear in which Mrs. Montenegro was expecting.  Photos of a cute little girl with auburn hair followed, but all the photos came to an abrupt stop—though the album had dozens of still-blank pages left—when the little girl was only a tiny child.  There had been photos of a first birthday party, but none for a second birthday.

            That fit quite neatly with the clothing in the nursery, but what had happened to the child?  She obviously wasn’t Diane:  she couldn’t be only twelve years old!  Perhaps the little girl had died of the same cause as her mother—disease or accident, or given everything else Arthur had learnt, it could have been murder—but why were there no pictures of Diane?

            There wasn’t time to ponder it now.  Arthur removed several of the photos of Brian and Mrs. Montenegro together, placing them inside one of the books, then put the album back on the shelf.  After turning off the light, he scarpered with his finds.

            He had barely gotten the door to his bedroom closed behind him when he heard Dr. Weissman leaving Diane’s room.

            Just in case anyone came into his room looking for him, Arthur stashed the purloined books and video tape inside his suitcase, still hidden in the back of the closet.

 

*******

 

            By the next morning, Arthur had gotten about halfway through the first of the unauthorised biographies of Brian.  It was decidedly an amateur production:  the author kept confusing Birmingham, England, with Birmingham, Alabama.  Many of the details were inaccurate, especially regarding Brian’s early life and early career, to the extent that it didn’t even mention Cecil at all, and claimed that Mandy had been Brian’s childhood sweetheart.  It seemed relatively accurate on the points of Brian’s career following his appearance on “Top of the Pops,” but there was nothing that could give a glimpse of what the man was really like.  Hardly surprising from a shoddy work that was written slapdash to take advantage of his popularity.

            It was proving worth his time to read it, though:  Mrs. Montenegro had drawn little hearts on all the photos of Brian, and written comments in the margins in various places, many of them correcting the book’s stupidities, but also jotting dreamy little comments like “How cute!” and “I wish I’d been there!”

            He had stopped reading when he got to the first photo of Brian and Curt together.  Or rather, what _should_ have been a photo of them together.  Mrs. Montenegro had taped a photo of herself over Curt, in roughly the same pose.

            Of course, as soon as morning came, Arthur had to hide the book back in his suitcase, just in case.  Then he had no choice but to spend the whole day out of his room, because Diane was being particularly clingy, and Dr. Weissman didn’t show up that day.  But when the evening news came on, it all felt worth it.  The news report showed a lengthy clip of a press conference that President Reynolds had held earlier that day, about his ‘plan’ to put a stop to the spread of the AIDS epidemic.

            “The solution is so simple that I’m surprised none of the so-called experts have thought of it,” the President began, with an arrogant laugh.  “AIDS is a gay disease, which spreads through bodily fluids, so gay drug addicts have passed the disease to straight junkies using dirty needles.  The first step in putting a stop to it is the same as the first step in curing any other epidemic.  Once you’ve identified the cause of the outbreak, you quarantine it to protect the rest of the community.  So in my second term, there will be a special new census taken of every adult—and teenager!—in this great country of ours, asking just two questions:  ‘are you gay?’ and ‘do you use drugs?’ Those who answer ‘yes’ to either question will be transported to safe, isolated communities where they can’t infect anyone else.  Within a generation, the disease will be eradicated from our shores!”

            Reynolds looked quite smug when he finished talking, but his expression changed to one of shock almost immediately, as the press corps responded with a great clamour of outraged questions, rather than applauding him.  Arthur wished he could feel as angry about it as he knew he ought to, but the whole thing was so bloody stupid that it was hard to take it seriously.  Knowing the purpose of the census, who in their right mind would answer either question in the affirmative?  Better to lie than to be sent to a modern day concentration camp.

            After dinner, Arthur told Diane that he had a terrible headache, and retreated to his room early so he could do more reading in that awful excuse for a biography.  He was hoping that the further comments in the margin would tell him something he hadn’t already figured out.  In the end, he was disappointed, but he didn’t let that stop him, and went on to the next biography.  Its early chapters were no more accurate than the first one, though they did at least get Brian and Mandy’s early relationship closer to being right.  It was still wrong—it said they met at university—but at least it didn’t claim they were childhood sweethearts.  The new claim must have been believable to Mrs. Montenegro, because she had written “Why didn’t I go to college in London instead of at home?” in the margin, and had even drawn a frowning face with a teardrop escaping its cartoonish eye.

            The next day, Senator Montenegro left soon after breakfast, because he had a press conference of his own to hold at his office.  Arthur was eager to find out what he was saying in it, and thankfully—since it was local—it was covered live by one of the smaller local stations.  There were two ways he could handle the situation:  distance himself from the President, or embrace the ludicrous policy.  Given that New York had a fairly sizeable gay population—and doubtless an even larger community of drug addicts—Arthur thought it likely that the Senator would want to placate his voters by at least partially distancing himself from the policy.

            Instead, he did the complete opposite:  he not only endorsed the “AIDS Quarantine Camps,” as they had been dubbed by the press, but insisted that he had helped the President work out all the details of the plan.  Admittedly, his more conservative constituents would love him for it, but it had to have lost him a lot of future votes.

            The reaction was swift:  in the following morning’s paper, there was a lengthy article on plans that were in development to protest the Quarantine Camps.  The local protests were going to include a peaceful march on Saturday, which would go past both Senator Montenegro’s office and his home.

            Arthur’s heart started pounding as soon as he read about the path the protest march would take.

            It might be his only chance to get out of this hellish place alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being pretty long, because if I'd had that last scene be its own chapter, it would have been quite short. And I want the following scenes split up neatly into three chapters to cap off the fic. (Rather, two chapters and an epilogue.)
> 
> Yup, tomorrow we enter the end game! :) (Better still, Curt will finally show up! (And not just in another flashback!))


	19. Chapter 19

            Curt had never been into politics.  And he sure as hell wasn’t into protest marches.  When Mandy first called him and asked him to take part, he told her to fuck off.  Then he turned on the TV and saw ‘Tommy Stone’ talking about how protesting such an innocent plan was an overreaction of the worst kind.  Curt hadn’t even bothered to turn off the TV before calling Mandy back and telling her he’d changed his mind.

            Of course, now that he was actually out on the march, Curt wished he hadn’t come.  Like a jackass, he had left his cigarettes at home, and Mandy wouldn’t share hers.  On top of that, there was press around, and he was right at the side of the procession, so if he stopped somewhere to get a beer or something, he’d suddenly be all over the tabloids as an alcoholic.  He didn’t drink any more than anyone else—well, not much more—and he didn’t really care what anyone thought of what he did with his life, but the idea of someone wasting ink to call him a lush was just too galling.  So he was totally sober as well as dying for a smoke.

            On the other hand, some of it was actually fun.  A bunch of hecklers had been waiting for them outside of Montenegro’s office, and the other people in the march seemed to get a thrill out of seeing Curt flip them off.  Then he started singing as they walked, every dirty song he could think of, especially any that had suggestively homoerotic lyrics.  When they passed by a white limo with the license plate “TS1”, Curt started belting out one of Brian’s early songs, with the new lyrics Brian had written just for him; they were especially dirty, and just as catchy as the original version, and soon everyone was singing along.  It was pretty funny hearing Mandy sing “reach around and give me a wank,” but not nearly as funny as the thought that ‘Tommy Stone’ was sitting there in that limo, hearing his formerly private lewd love song splashed all over New York City.

            That magic had long since worn off by the time they got near Montenegro’s ridiculously big house.  Curt hadn’t walked that far since he’d run away from the trailer park, and he wasn’t really up to it anymore.  If it hadn’t been for all the fucking news cameras tailing the whole damned parade, he’d have gone to the nearest subway station and headed home several miles back.  Still, at least everyone else was tired, too.  Signs weren’t being held up quite as high, no one was singing anymore, and everyone was walking more slowly.

            That gave Curt plenty of time to check out the house as they walked past.  It was closed off from the street by a big gated fence, though maybe the fence was really there to keep in the six or seven Rottweilers that were standing at the gate, barking and snarling at the people in the street.  That gate, though!  An elaborate wrought-iron affair with stupid Victorian curlicues all over it.  Reminded him of the fence around the cemetery not far from the trailer park; he and every other teenager in the park and the nearby town used to climb over that fence all the time to meet up for sex among the tombstones.  That had been the first place he’d ever had sex with someone he _wasn’t_ related to…

            Curt had barely had that thought when a table suddenly flew through the big picture window above the front door of the house.  The table’s impact with the ground behind them distracted the dogs from the people in the street.  While the dogs were still inspecting the remains of the table, a dark-haired man emerged from the shattered window above.  Warily, the man stepped out onto the roof of the porch, and made his way towards the edge.  Was he going to try to climb down the columns that held up the roof?  Seemed to Curt like a good way to fall and break his neck…

            Just before the man on the porch reached his destination, there was a shriek from inside the house.  The man glanced over his shoulder and then—even looking back on the memory later, Curt wasn’t sure which came first.  Did the man jump off the roof first, or did the gunshot sound first?  Was it a dive, or was he just tumbling down, having been shot?  Either way…

            “Holy shit!”  Curt was climbing the gate almost before the man hit the ground.

            “I’ll get the cops!” Mandy shouted.

            By the time Curt dropped down on the other side of the fence, those dogs were chewing on the man’s arms and legs.  Given that he wasn’t screaming, or even struggling, he had to be either unconscious or dead.

            Curt picked up one of the legs of the table that had flown out of the window, and started using it to drive away the dogs.  “Back off, motherfuckers!” he shouted at them.  Sometimes dogs reacted to things like that, but not these.  Most of them were still chewing on that poor guy, but a few were now snarling at Curt.

            By this point, a lot more people had come into the yard, and they helped get the dogs under control, grabbing their collars so they couldn’t bite anyone else.  As soon as the dogs were all contained, Curt dropped the table leg and knelt down beside the guy who’d come out of the house, rolling him over onto his back.

            It was a punch in the gut, one that felt sickeningly like the one he’d had in Berlin ten years ago…

            “Hey, wake up!” Curt shouted, shaking him by his shoulders, despite other people yelling at him not to move the man.

            The eyes fluttered open, and the lips formed a small smile.  “Curt…”  A little sound, almost a chuckle.  “Am I dreamin’…?”

            “No, you’re not dreaming,” Curt assured him.  “But what the hell’s going on?  You didn’t break in there for a story or something, did you?”

            A weak little laugh was the only answer.  There wasn’t time for much more than that before the ambulance arrived.  Well, the cops _had_ been tailing the march the whole way.  Of course it didn’t take long for the emergency vehicle to get there.

            The paramedics carefully moved him onto a stretcher as Curt watched helplessly.  “Who is this guy?” one of them was asking.  “One of the protestors?”

            “No, he came out of the house here,” someone from the march said.

            “His name’s Arthur Stuart,” Curt told them, getting back to his feet.  “He’s a reporter for the _Herald_.”  He bit his lip a moment.  “Look, maybe I better just come with you.”

            The paramedics didn’t seem too sure about that, but they didn’t stop him from climbing into the ambulance alongside the stretcher.  They took Arthur’s vitals as the ambulance started moving again, though they were pretty surprised to discover that he was wearing five shirts and three pairs of pants.  That had kept the dogs from doing him any real damage; he must have known they’d be down there.  Probably why he hadn’t just gone out the front door like a normal person.  Unless he’d just been trying to make a sensational entrance…but judging by the way he dressed, that probably wasn’t his style.

            After they were done with Arthur’s vitals, one of the paramedics looked at Curt.  “Keep him talking,” he said.  “Sometimes letting them fall asleep is a bad idea after a head injury.  Make sure he knows who he is and where is.”

            Curt nodded, and moved over closer to the stretcher, leaning down close to Arthur’s face.  “Hey,” he said, to get his attention.  “Stay with me, okay?”

            “I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Arthur promised.

            “I’ve gotta make sure, though.”

            “Okay…?”

            “What’s your name?”  Start with the basics.

            “Arthur Stuart.”

            “Favorite color?”

            A small smile.  “Black.”

            “Song?”

            “Gimme Danger.”

            “Movie?”

            Arthur shut his eyes a moment, then shook his head slightly.  “Don’t really ‘ave one.”

            “Are you high?”

            “If that’s morphine they just injected me with, I probably will be soon,” Arthur answered, with a small laugh.

            “When did you move to America?”

            “1977.  Summer.”

            “What made you move here?”

            Arthur sighed.  “Told myself I wanted to live on my own, not gettin’ help from anyone else.”

            “So you weren’t chasing after an ex or anything?”  Curt did his best to remind himself that it would be absurd to be disappointed about that.  But something about meeting up again like this…it felt like Fate or Destiny, or one of those other Capital Letter things.  But it’d be more Romantic if at least one of them had been looking for the other…

            “I didn’t think so at the time…but I think, deep down, I was…”

            Trying to think of something else to say from there—something else suitable to be said in front of anonymous paramedics—was so difficult that Curt couldn’t manage it.  All he could think of to ask about…the more he thought, the more filthy it got.

            Arthur was the one who broke the silence.  “What are you doin’ here?” he asked.  “Were you in the protest march?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Why?”

            “Mandy’s idea.”

            “Are you and her…?”

            “We’re not all that close, but we keep in touch,” Curt said, with a small smile.  “We’ve got a pain in common that no one else can understand.”  Neither one of them had been very good at moving on past first the broken heart and then the betrayal, but Curt was slightly better at it than Mandy was.  Maybe ‘cause it was easier for a guy to just whip it out and fuck some random stranger than it was for a girl to open her legs and let someone in.

            “I can understand it a little,” Arthur told him.  “I ‘aven’t lived through it, but…at least I already know the story.”

            “Yeah, I guess you do.”  Though _how_ Arthur knew it was a question that needed to be answered.  Mandy had sworn blind that she hadn’t told him, and there’s no way Cecil had spilled it.  So who _had_ told him?  And why hadn’t he printed the truth?

            While Curt was still trying to figure out how to ask about that without letting the paramedics in on Brian’s secret—Tommy’s secret—the ambulance arrived at the hospital.  As they wheeled Arthur into surgery, they took his bag off his shoulder and gave it to Curt to hold onto.

            He did his best to sit patiently and wait for the surgery to be over.  Without looking in the bag.

            That lasted about ten minutes.  Maybe five.

            But the bag was pretty heavy!  And square.

            Lifting the flap, Curt found a bunch of records inside:  his own, and the ones released by the Flaming Creatures.  Wow, that was a trip.  The Flaming Creatures, huh?  He hadn’t thought about _those_ guys in years.  Pack of weirdoes, but they were good musicians.  Why had Arthur held onto their records as tightly as Curt’s?

            Wait, that’s right, they were the ‘friends’ Arthur had been rooming with ten years ago.  Of course he’d forgotten that:  there were some people Curt didn’t want to get sloppy seconds from…

            Also in the bag was Arthur’s wallet, a really old video tape—like Betamax or something—and an old biography of Brian?  What the fuck?  Why would Arthur have carried _that_ out of there like it was so precious?  The damned thing was so old that it had been written before that fucked up prank that had nearly caused Curt a lethal overdose in Berlin.

            Flipping through the biography, Curt found notes jotted in pink ink, with loopy letters and ‘i’s dotted with hearts, and a couple of old Polaroids showing Brian with an unfamiliar girl.  Okay, something was _definitely_ weird here…


	20. Chapter 20

            Arthur woke up at the feeling of a woman’s hand on his wrist.  Instinctively, he jerked it back, thinking Diane had gotten in somehow.  An unfamiliar voice gasped at the motion.  Opening his eyes, Arthur saw that he was in a hospital room, and the woman he’d pulled his hand away from was a black nurse, who looked a little frightened now.

            “I’m sorry,” he said, with a small smile.  “I didn’t know where I was…”

            “That’s all right,” the nurse assured him, smiling back at him.  It was a nice smile.  Then she glanced over to the other side of the bed.  “Your friend’s been waiting with you the whole time,” she said quietly.

            Arthur followed her gaze, and saw that Curt was sitting in a chair beside the bed, his head slumped forward onto his chest as he slept.  Then that wasn’t a dream after all!  Arthur was so elated by the sight that he couldn’t stop smiling, even while the nurse was taking his blood pressure.

            “How long ‘ave I been out?” he asked, looking back at the nurse as she was removing the blood pressure cuff from his arm.

            “You’ve been out of surgery about twelve hours,” she told him, patting his hand gently.  “Don’t push yourself, all right?  You’ve had a rough time of it.  Just try and get some rest.”

            “But…I can’t afford to be hospitalised.  I only ‘ave a few hundred dollars.”  That surely wouldn’t even cover what had already been done…

            “Don’t worry about the money,” the nurse said, with a warm smile.  “Your friend said he’d pay your bills if you couldn’t.  Besides, maybe the police will catch the shooter, and the courts can make _him_ pay.”

            Arthur nodded, and looked over at Curt’s sleeping form.  He had offered to pay Arthur’s hospital fees?  Why?  Did he know that Arthur had lost his job and was now broke?

            “You know, your friend looks kind of like Curt Wild,” the nurse said, after a moment’s silence.  “Don’t you think so?”

            Arthur did his best not to laugh.  “Yeah,” he agreed.

            “I wonder what ever happened to him?”

            “He’s still around,” Arthur assured her.

            “That’s good to know.  He was quite the sexy beast,” the nurse commented, with a nervous little laugh.

            “I’ve always thought so,” Arthur agreed quietly.  If the nurse heard him, she didn’t comment.  She just finished checking his vitals, then left the room.

            Arthur looked around.  It was a private room, no other beds.  His satchel was lying on a little table near Curt’s chair.  Hopefully, no one had looked inside.  Or if they had, hopefully only Curt had looked at it.  Though maybe the contents wouldn’t really mean anything to anyone else anyway…but he _was_ concerned that if anyone else found the pin hidden in his wallet, they might steal it.

            The room itself was quite quiet, but Arthur could hear the hustle and bustle of the corridor outside the closed door.  They probably weren’t too far removed from the emergency room.  Or maybe this hospital was just always noisy.

            A particularly loud noise outside woke Curt with a start.  After his head jerked up, he looked around in a confused manner for a moment, then smiled on seeing that Arthur was awake.  “Hey, how are you feeling?”

            “Considerin’ I got shot and fell off a roof, pretty good,” Arthur chuckled.  His side ached where the bullet had struck him, and his leg was killing him…and now that he was thinking about it, it was starting to itch, too, but since it was in a cast, he couldn’t scratch it…

            “They said the bullet missed all the major organs,” Curt told him, moving his chair closer.  “Went right out the other side, too, so the cops are gonna have trouble finding it to match it with the gun.”

            “It was the gun Senator Montenegro used in Korea,” Arthur told him.  “Or that’s what his daughter said it was.”

            “Does he have a daughter?”

            “Uh…I was told she was his daughter…”  Arthur smiled weakly.  “I’ve been ‘aving my doubts, though…”

            Curt looked at him sharply, then shook his head.  “I really want to know what’s been going on,” he said.  “Are you feeling up to explaining?”

            Arthur nodded.  “I’ve got plenty of energy to talk with.  It’s doin’ anything else that I don’t think I can handle.”  He paused a moment, biting his lip.  “Where do you want me to start?”

            “How about you start by telling me just why _you_ were the one looking for Brian,” Curt suggested.  The tone in his voice suggested that had been eating at him for some time.

            “I didn’t actually want the assignment,” Arthur chuckled.  “Fought to get out of it, even.”  Then he began to relay the tale, starting at the meeting where Lou had told them about the story he wanted to run.  As he got to his own thoughts at the time about the assignment, on how hard he had tried over the last few years to distance himself from his old life, and the feeling that something in his past had been haunting him, both calling to him and also frightening him away, he couldn’t help but smile as he looked into Curt’s eyes.  “I didn’t realise at the time that it was you.”

            Curt smiled, and took hold of his hand, but didn’t say anything, so Arthur went on with the story, following his own attempts to investigate the story with an almost religious faithfulness, until he got to the phone call in which Curt had pretended not to be himself.

            Arthur couldn’t quite bring himself to say aloud the pain he had felt at that.  He had recognised Curt’s voice—how could he not have?—and the hurt that Curt hadn’t remembered him, hadn’t wanted to talk to him…it had been far worse than he would have expected at the time.  But he couldn’t say any of that.  Instead, he said “It’s only now, lookin’ back, that I see how you patched through my walls and entered my life…in waves.”

            Gently, Curt shifted his grip on Arthur’s hand, lacing their fingers together, the way he had when they had made love the second time, under the pale dawn sky…

            Slowly, Arthur continued his story, moving on past their reunion in the bar to his unpleasant first meeting with Diane Montenegro in the street outside, and everything that had followed, with one exception:  he entirely left out Tommy Stone’s visit to the Montenegro manor.  It hadn’t yet produced any fruit—if it ever would—and mentioning Tommy would be too cruel to Curt after all he had suffered.

            “That’s pretty fucked up,” Curt sighed, when the story was over.

            “Did they arrest her?” Arthur asked.

            “I don’t know,” Curt admitted.  “I haven’t seen a paper or anything.  I can call Mandy and ask,” he suggested.  “I could use a smoke break anyway…”

            Arthur laughed.  “Go on, then.”  Compared to everything else Curt had been addicted to in his life, cigarettes seemed downright harmless.

            “You sure you’re gonna be okay?”

            “Yeah, I’ll be fine.  If anything happens, there’s nurses on call.”

            “You’d rather have them than me?  What have they got that I don’t?” Curt asked.  Hopefully his wounded tone was just a joke…

            “A nursing degree.”

            “Yeah, I don’t have one of those,” Curt agreed.  “All right, I’m going, then.  But if anything happens, have the nurses come find me!”

            “I will.”

            Curt leaned down and gave Arthur a brief kiss before letting go of his hand and leaving the room.  The kiss left Arthur in a state of blissful elation that lasted long enough that he was still euphoric when he heard the door open again.  “That didn’t take long,” he commented, as he turned his head towards the door.

            But it wasn’t Curt who had come in.  It was Tommy Stone.

            “Wha—you—what are you doin’ here?” Arthur asked, his eyes widening.  He was more worried about what Curt would say if he found Tommy there than he was flustered at Tommy’s presence.

            “Who were you expecting?”

            “A…friend…” Arthur answered uncomfortably.  “He went out to make a phone call and have a fag…”

            Tommy laughed.  “Your boyfriend?” he asked, as he sat down in the chair that was probably still filled with Curt’s warmth.

            Arthur’s face felt hot at the idea of Curt being his boyfriend.  “Not…exactly…”  But that kiss had left him hopeful that maybe somehow…  “But why are you here?” Arthur asked, trying to steer the conversation back to its point in order to get Tommy out of there as soon as possible.

            “You’re the one who wanted this,” Tommy replied, holding out a manila envelope towards him.  “He didn’t need much time to discover quite a lot.”

            Arthur accepted the envelope with a trembling hand.  The writing on the outside said “Investigation into Diane Montenegro,” accompanied by some dates, a filing number, and the name of the detective agency.

            “How did you know I was here?”

            “You were shot _and_ fell off a roof with more than a few cameras rolling.  The story even made the national news,” Tommy laughed.

            “That’s humiliating…”

            “The police didn’t release your name to the media, if it’s any consolation.  Though a few of the local newspapers seem to have gotten hold of it somehow.”

            Arthur tried to laugh.  “If they had pictures of my face, someone probably recognised me.  I’ve been to a lot of press conferences in the past few years.”  He sighed, and looked down at the envelope.  “This report…’ave you read it?”

            Tommy nodded.  “I knew a fair amount of it already, but the things I didn’t know…”

            “After your visit, I found some pictures of you in the house,” Arthur said.  “From twelve years ago.  Is _that_ in the report?”

            “Not in any great detail, but it’s touched on.”  He paused, looking concerned.  “The photos weren’t…explicit, were they?”

            Arthur tried to keep his face calm and expressionless.  “Not the ones I found.”

            “That’s a relief.”

            “Did you actually _take_ some that were—”

            “I’d had a lot to drink,” Tommy insisted, cutting him off.  “I don’t normally like to expose myself before strangers, unlike someone I used to know.”

            Curt…

            “What are you looking over there for?” Tommy asked.  “Is there something in your bag?”

            Arthur flushed.  He was going to _have_ to do something about his tendency to avoid eye contact with others when certain subjects—especially Curt—came up!  “A couple of the photos,” he said weakly.  “I took ‘em with me, in case I needed evidence.”

            “Evidence of _what_ , exactly?  What are you planning on accusing me of?”

            “Nothing.  They’re evidence of what’s been happenin’ in that place,” Arthur said, with an uncomfortable smile.

            Tommy stood up again, and went over to the bag.  “I think I’d best relieve you of them, then.  You don’t need any further evidence than what’s in that envelope, and I don’t need the scandal.”

            “Why?” Arthur countered.  “It’s not as though the pictures are of Tommy Stone.”

            Tommy’s hand faltered halfway through picking up the bag.  “Can I really trust you to leave the name Tommy Stone out of your story?”

            “I’m a man of my word.”  And currently unemployed, but if he’d really made the national news, then any paper in the city—maybe the country—would be glad to buy his story, even if they wouldn’t necessarily hire him beyond that.

            Tommy withdrew his hand entirely, but didn’t turn his face away from the satchel.  Not until the door to the room opened, anyway.

            “What the fuck are _you_ doing here?!” Curt’s voice demanded from the doorway.  When Arthur turned to look at him, he looked even more furious than he sounded, though Arthur wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

            “I could ask the same question of you,” Tommy replied in a cold voice.  Arthur would have expected him to look just as angry as Curt—or nearly so—but instead his expression was sombre, almost mournful.  In fact, it was very much the same expression he’d had on his face watching Curt on stage at the Death of Glitter concert…

            “He was takin’ part in the protest march,” Arthur said, trying to stop them from getting into a big row.  That wouldn’t be good publicity for either one of them, and it might end up in assault charges against Curt.  “When I fell, he—”

            “You don’t owe this motherfucker any explanations, Arthur,” Curt said, still glaring at Tommy.

            “On a first name basis, are you?”  Tommy’s voice sounded mocking, but his face wasn’t.  It was strangely expressionless, as if he didn’t know what he really thought of the possibilities.  “I suppose you’re the one who told him my secret?”

            Curt laughed.  “Does it matter?”

            “I figured it out on my own!” Arthur insisted.  He didn’t want to get in the middle of their argument—even as a peacemaker—but he didn’t want to have the credit for his investigative instinct taken away, either.  “I didn’t run across him in the bar until after I’d seen you at the stage door!”

            “So you _had_ met before the protest march,” Tommy snarled.  Now he was actually starting to look angry…

            “That bar wasn’t the first place we met.”  Curt moved up beside the bed, and put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder.  “But because your goons were still tailing me, we couldn’t relive our passionate night ten years ago.”

            “You bloody whore!”  For just a moment, it was Brian Slade’s voice that came out of Tommy’s mouth.  Then he shook his head, and started for the door without another word.

            “Tommy!” Arthur called out just before he could leave the room.  Tommy didn’t reply, or even turn to look at him, but he did stop.  “You should come clean about your past.  Your fans—the old ones and the new ones alike—deserve that much respect from you, after all the love they’ve given.”

            Tommy glanced at him over his shoulder, and let out a small chuckle.  “I’ll think about it,” he said, then left the room, shutting the door behind him.

            “What the fuck was he doing in here?!” Curt demanded, giving Arthur an accusing look.

            Arthur sighed, and showed Curt the envelope in his hands.  “I…I didn’t want to admit it, not to you, of all people,” he added, after explaining about Tommy’s visit to the Montenegro manor.

            Curt grimaced, and sat down on the chair again.  “Guess I’m not too surprised,” he sighed.  “When I asked Mandy about it, one of the first things she said was that Brian spent his first night in America fucking that Senator’s wife.”

            “Shite…”

            Curt chuckled.  “But she said she spent that time with both the maid and the butler, so it evened out.”

            Arthur nodded, not sure what he thought about that.  Especially since he wasn’t sure if it was a joke on Mandy’s—or Curt’s—part.  “What about the police?” he asked.  “Did they arrest Diane?”

            “Sort of.  When the police went into the house to find out what happened—right after the ambulance left—the old man started saying you’d been a burglar, and that his daughter had shot you in self-defence.  According to the paper, the police were about to radio the ambulance to keep you confined as a prisoner at the hospital, when the butler—not the same one Mandy fucked, of course—interrupted and explained that the Senator and his daughter had been holding you a virtual prisoner for almost two months.  The police weren’t sure what to think about the conflicting stories, so all three of them are more or less under house arrest, and technically I guess you’re under ‘don’t leave town’ status.”

            Arthur sighed.  “I should have realised the Senator wasn’t about to let them just take Diane away.”

            “Better be some good proof in that envelope,” Curt said, with a bitter snarl.  “People like Montenegro can get away with murder.”

            “That might be literally what he’d be doing,” Arthur replied, as he opened the envelope and pulled out a file folder.

            The first page inside the folder contained basic information:  “Name:  Diane Montenegro.  Born:  7/7/1948 as Diane Merlot.  Graduated Wellesley College, early in June of 1970.  Married to Senator Charles Montenegro, late in June of 1970.  Gave birth to a daughter, late January 1973.”

            Arthur stared at the page for a long time.  “How the fuck could she be in her late thirties?!”

            The second page was background information on the Montenegro marriage.  The Merlots—a very wealthy Boston family—had been opposed to their daughter getting married immediately out of college, especially considering that the man she was marrying was more than twenty years her senior.  Senator Montenegro had tried to convince them that he was younger than they thought—that must have been the reasoning behind the wedding portrait—but Diane had lost patience with his attempts to win over her parents, and had simply cut ties with them.  Diane’s friends had all been mystified as to why she wanted to marry an old, conservative politician, and it had led to considerable strain on her friendships as well as her family relationships.

            Turning to the next page, Arthur found a photocopy of a newspaper article from 7 February, 1974.  It described the terrible auto wreck that Diane had gotten into early the previous morning, when she smashed her car into an on-coming truck.  Her massive injuries had put her in a coma, and her daughter was killed.  The driver of the truck sustained only mild injuries, and swore that the car had come out of nowhere.  Eye witnesses said that Diane’s driving had become erratic moments before she veered out of her lane and struck the truck.  Arthur didn’t need to see speculations as to what had made her become so distraught behind the wheel of the car:  she must have heard a news report stating that Brian had been shot the night before in London…

            Handing the article to Curt to look at, Arthur started reading the next page.  It was a medical report on the accident and the injured parties.  The daughter was still barely alive when the ambulance arrived, but died of blood loss before reaching the hospital.  Her blood type, according to the file, was B, while her mother’s was O.  A hand-written note on the page said that Senator Montenegro’s blood type was A.

            “Curt, do you know what Brian’s blood type is?”

            Curt laughed.  “Yeah.  It’s AB.  Being weird is in his blood.”

            “I wonder if the Senator knew already, or if he only found out when he saw the medical report?”

            “Knew what?”

            “That he wasn’t the father of his wife’s daughter.”

            “Shit, you think it was Brian?” Curt asked.

            “Since she named the girl Brianna Slade Montenegro, I’d say _she_ certainly thought so,” Arthur said, with an unhappy chuckle.  “But if his blood’s AB, then he could have been.”

            “Damn…”

            Moving on to the next page, Arthur found a report of Diane’s patchy recovery, which was so frequently broken by screaming and crying fits that she was transferred to private care within the Senator’s house within a few months of awakening from her coma.  From that time forward, all public records of her ceased.  The detective had found spotty evidence of at least one plastic surgeon called to the Montenegro estate for an off-the-books surgery…

            …and then, about 1977 or 1978, Diane Montenegro began to parade about New York City with her new face, calling herself the Senator’s daughter.

            Over the next few pages, Arthur found reports of at least nine men who were now missing persons, all of whom were last seen with Diane Montenegro.  Judging by the photographs, they were almost certainly the men whose belongings he had found on the second storey of the Montenegro household.

            Judging by Dr. Weissman’s reaction to being told that Arthur was gay, Arthur came up with two possible theories to explain the deaths of those men.  Either Diane had come to expect that any man who slept with her would die, as Brian had, or she came to conflate them with her husband somehow, and that made her hate and eventually kill them.  Given that she had at some point forgotten Arthur’s name and come to the erroneous conclusion that it was ‘Charlie,’ the latter seemed likely, but something still felt wrong.

            After a bit of wrestling with his conscience, Arthur explained his theories to Curt, and asked what he thought of it.  “Maybe she’s not really the one that killed them,” Curt suggested.  “Maybe her old man did it.  Like as soon as he caught them in the act, he decided it was time for them to die.”

            “Except that she tried to drown me, and then shot me when she realised I was escapin’,” Arthur pointed out.

            “Yeah, that’s true.”  Curt frowned, then shrugged.  “Maybe they’re _both_ fucking nuts, and she killed some of them, and he killed the rest.”

            Arthur laughed.  “I could believe that,” he agreed.  “But I shouldn’t be laughin’ about this.  All these men are dead…and I could ‘ave so easily joined them.”

            Gently, Curt stroked his hair, as if he couldn’t think of any other way to comfort him.

            They stayed that way in silence for several minutes, until Arthur heard a woman’s voice speaking loudly in the hallway nearby.  “You’ll find him through that door,” she was saying.

            Moments later, the door opened, and a basket of fruit walked in.

            Rather, it was carried into the room in the hands of someone whose face was hidden by the large red bow on the basket’s handle.  A second man came in and closed the door behind him, at which time the basket was lowered, revealing the face of Arthur’s former editor, Lou.

            The old man smiled at him pleasantly as Murray came up beside him and took the basket out of his hands, putting it on a table nearby.  “How are you feeling?” Lou asked, as if Arthur was merely taking a day off sick.

            “Considerin’ I’ve got a broken leg and I was shot yesterday, pretty well,” Arthur answered, trying to order his brain enough to give voice to his confusion.  Why would the man who fired him come to visit him in hospital?

            “How did you come to be inside Senator Montenegro’s house?”

            “We’ve got a betting pool going at the office,” Murray added.  _That_ did not surprise Arthur in the least.

            “It’s a long story,” Arthur sighed.  And considering he’d already told it once today, he really didn’t want to have to tell it again.

            “Well, I won’t ask you to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Lou said, with that soft smile that usually accompanied making someone write a story they _really_ didn’t want to, but were going to do a fantastic job of.  “But can you have the story written up in time for tomorrow’s front page?”

            “Uh…”  Arthur’s mind was a complete blank.  He was so confused that for a moment he literally couldn’t process anything.  “But…didn’t you fire me?”

            “When did I say anything about firing you?”

            “Well…you…you told me to…”  Arthur shook his head.  “You were pressured into it.  By the same people that made you drop the Brian Slade story!”

            “I told you to travel for a while,” Lou corrected, like a school master with a particularly slow student.  “Those things blow over after a while.  Why would I want to give up one of my best men over something like that?”

            “Ah…”

            “Now that that’s cleared up, how soon can you write the story?”  The mark of a true newspaper man:  nothing mattered other than the front page.

            “What the fuck is the matter with you, old man?” Curt demanded.  “He’s stuck in the fucking hospital!”

            “Curt, please, let me handle this!”  Getting fired because Curt mouthed off to the editor who was now saying that he hadn’t actually fired Arthur after all…that would be the worst kind of bad joke.

            “It doesn’t have to be perfectly polished,” Lou added.  “A strong rough will be enough.  I can polish it up for you.”

            “I’m not very good at writin’ by hand,” Arthur said.  “And even if I could use my computer in here, I don’t ‘ave it anymore.  Had to pawn it, tryin’ to make my rent.”

            Lou looked at him mournfully, even as Murray started laughing.  “I’ll send someone around with a typewriter,” Lou said, after a moment’s pause.  “And don’t worry about the computer.  The paper will provide a new one.”  Surprisingly generous.  He must have expected that the exclusive story of what had happened in the Montenegro household was going to sell a _lot_ of copies.  “Oh, but where should we send it?  Sally said you’d been evicted.”

            “Er…”

            In the awkward pause that followed, Curt walked over to Arthur’s satchel, took out his little notebook, and flipped through to a blank page.  He wrote something on the page, ripped it out, and handed it to Lou.  “That’s my address,” he said.  “Send it there.  If I’m not home, the doorman’s got a little room to hold packages in.”

            Lou looked at Curt curiously, then nodded and smiled, putting the paper in his pocket.  Murray was looking at Curt with deep suspicion, however.  Well, let him.  Arthur didn’t care what anyone thought.

            There were a few more details that had to be hashed out—how long the article needed to be, when Arthur would be able to come back to work, and so on—then Lou promised he’d have the typewriter sent over _post haste_.  Then, finally, he and Murray left, though they left the door open, forcing Curt to go over and close it.

            Arthur watched him uncertainly as Curt came back over to the side of the bed.  Had he meant anything by that offer, or was he just trying to smooth over an awkward situation?  After several failed attempts to ask, Arthur fell silent again, deciding to wait.  He’d probably still be in hospital under observation for some time, after all.

            “I’m not offering to let you stay in my apartment for free,” Curt said, sitting on the edge of the bed.  “Just so you know.”

            Arthur nodded, with a furrowed brow.  “But I don’t have much money…”

            “I don’t want money,” Curt replied, leaning in a bit closer.  “You’re gonna pay me with your body.”

            Arthur smiled widely.  “It’ll be my pleasure.”

            Curt leaned in the rest of the way and kissed him passionately.  Closing his eyes, Arthur dedicated his entirety, body and soul, to the kiss.


	21. Chapter 21

**Epilogue**

 

            By the time Arthur was ready to be discharged from the hospital, a great deal had happened on the Montenegro case—or the Montenegro Affair, as Lou had dubbed it on the front page—or the Montenegro Scandal, as most politicians, especially conservative ones, called it.

            His article telling the world everything he had been through had taken up the _Herald_ ’s entire front page the day after he woke up in hospital, and had spilled over onto several interior pages.  The day’s run sold out in its entirety, even though Lou had had almost twice the usual number of copies printed up.  The one problem was that Arthur had felt he couldn’t use much of the information that Tommy’s detective had found, because he couldn’t provide a logical excuse for _having_ that information.  But it was probably best to let the people come to their own conclusions anyway, so Arthur tried not to worry about it.

            The police had come to question Arthur the previous afternoon, so they already knew the story, and had the private investigator’s report.  But it wasn’t until they saw the public reaction to the story that they decided to arrest Senator Montenegro and Diane.  The arrest, of course, was splashed all over the television news programmes, though they all ended up sharing largely the same footage, including repeating the shot of Arthur falling off the Montenegro manor’s balcony, which was both unnerving and surreal to watch.  Obviously, as prisoners, neither the Senator nor Diane was speaking to the press, but Edwards was all too glad to talk to them, and one thing he said was repeated in every single news broadcast:  “A very famous butler once said that rather than our employers requiring references from us, we ought to require references from _them_.  I can see now just how right he was!”

            The _Times_ , no doubt horrified that a low-end paper like the _Herald_ had gotten such an amazing scoop, came up with its own fantastic report on the case the following day.  They had looked into the previous employees who had worked in Senator Montenegro’s home, and found the same reports that the private detective had ignored as unremarkable:  every one of them had left the country upon leaving Montenegro’s employ.  Only a few quick calls to their destinations revealed that they had never arrived, nor had anyone been expecting them.  The tales of their emigrating had been concocted by Senator Montenegro so that they wouldn’t become even more missing persons.

            That night, the television news reports were falling all over themselves to show two new developments that had come up in the course of the day.  The first was a press conference held by Mr. & Mrs. Merlot, Diane’s parents.  They had come up to New York as soon as the story broke, and were insisting that their daughter should not face trial alongside her husband.  “Even back in the 19th century, what Mr. Rochester did to his wife was viewed as monstrous,” Mrs. Merlot said, “and yet my poor daughter was put through something even worse.  Seeing that her injury had left her mind weakened, he not only locked her away from society, but also did his utmost to brainwash her!”

            “I blame myself,” Mr. Merlot said.  He was barely any older than Senator Montenegro, and had a distinguished air that the Senator entirely lacked.  “I should never have allowed my little girl to marry a man so close to my own age.  The engagement was a cry for help, and I should have done everything in my power to stop it, even if I had to lock her up to do it!”

            “That would make you no better than he is,” Mrs. Merlot pointed out.  “Her friends and I should have talked it out with her until she admitted she didn’t really love him or want to marry him.”  She shook her head.  “Then that man would have had to brainwash some other woman into his foul ways.  A less innocent, sheltered girl would have been harder to break than our little Diane.”

            “Innocent?” Curt repeated, scowling at the television in Arthur’s hospital room.  “If she fucked Brian _before_ she went nuts, then she sure as hell wasn’t innocent.”

            “A different kind of innocence,” Arthur said, patting his hand.  “Though I think her mother didn’t really know her too well, either.”  Not if everything she wrote in the margins of those biographies was any indication of what the real Diane had been like.

            “We’re going to get our little girl the best mental health treatments money can buy,” Mr. Merlot told the cameras.  “And not from a self-serving, manipulative quack like the one Montenegro was sending her to.”

            While the first development was food for a scandal-happy audience—not to mention the news programmes providing the scandal—the second development was downright shocking.

            It was less a press conference than the reading of a prepared statement.

            Tommy Stone stood before countless cameras, with Shannon standing nervously at his side.  He stared into a piece of paper in his hand for a long time before speaking.  “It pains me to have to talk about any of this,” he said, “but now that I understand the full extent of what I’ve done, I have to come clean and hope my fans can forgive me.”  His pause was so long that Shannon moved closer, and set a comforting hand on his arm.  “I wasn’t born with the name Tommy Stone,” he said, finally looking up at the cameras, “though my name at birth really was Thomas.”

            “Shit, is he really gonna…”  Curt didn’t finish his sentence, letting it dangle in the air uselessly.  It wasn’t as though Arthur needed him to finish it.

            “When I first came to the public eye, it was under the name Brian Slade.”  The clicking of camera shutters in the press room became almost deafening, but it quieted down again as soon as Tommy continued.  “I destroyed that career in a moment of selfish stupidity, brought on by drugs and…personal problems.  I faked my own death, thinking it would be a laugh to watch everyone mourn me as I got back at everyone I felt had wronged me.  If I had been sober, I hope I would never have done anything so cruel.”  He shut his eyes sadly.  “I don’t know if it would ever have occurred to me just how badly that would affect my more passionate fans.  When I first came back to America, having decided to try again, I was quietly detained at the airport on the standing orders of Senator Montenegro.  He brought me to see his wife, whose condition—which he described as ‘deranged’—he blamed entirely on the automobile accident she got in upon hearing the mistaken news of my death.”

            Tommy opened his mouth to speak again, but all that came out was a choking sound.  Shannon handed him a glass of water, but he didn’t drink from it.  Instead, he opened his eyes again and looked into the cameras with a rare pain.  When he spoke again, it was with Brian’s true voice.  “Only then did I look into it.  What had happened to my fans in the time they thought I was dead.  Diane wasn’t the only one.  There were others who got in terrible accidents when they heard the news.  There were even a few suicides.  I didn’t want to live with that; I didn’t want to face the public with the name of a traitor—a murderer—tied about my neck.  I wanted to make amends.  To give people pleasure once more, without the pain my name might bring them.  So I changed my name, and began to perform music that matched the modern tastes, without my previous rebellious message, which had caused my fans suffering in their personal lives as they tried to live up to my outré philosophy.”

            “Even though it was that message that attracted us in the first place,” Arthur sighed.  But maybe that, too, was part of his point.  If it had been Tommy Stone who had been shot, no fans would be distraught enough to kill themselves, because their affection for him was shallow and fleeting.  A fan’s love for Brian Slade was deep, and should have been for life.

            “I can see now,” Tommy continued, “that I was only making things worse.  If I had remained Brian Slade, if Diane had been able to see that I was alive and well, maybe she would have come back to herself.  The young woman I met in 1972 would never have allowed herself to be so caged, nor put up with harm coming to others in her name.”

            The developments flowed naturally from there.  Dr. Weissman was arrested as an accomplice and conspirator, and Diane was remanded to a state mental hospital, in the hopes that she could be restored to herself.  Senator Montenegro—even in the face of having his position taken away by an emergency vote, and his old friend President Reynolds repudiating him—refused to admit to any wrongdoing, insisting that this was all a massive conspiracy against him, and that Arthur and Edwards were the real criminals.  Dr. Weissman was less stubborn, and agreed to tell everything he knew in hopes of a reduced sentence.

            During the early days of her convalescence in the Montenegro household, according to Dr. Weissman, Diane was bewildered, seemingly unsure even of who she was, let alone where she was or what she was doing there.  By the time Dr. Weissman was seeing her regularly, Senator Montenegro had already managed to convince her of many things that would have been anathema to her before, particularly regarding the evils of rock and roll music.  Dr. Weissman tried to help her recover her faculties and her old personality, until the first time he was called in for an emergency.

            He arrived to find an unfamiliar young man sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, his skull badly fractured.  The young man was still alive, but might be in hospital for weeks, if not months.  Diane was in her room, having worked herself up into such a state that she had been tranquilised to protect her from herself.  It was the servants who explained to Dr. Weissman that she and the young man had been arguing at the top of the stairs.  When Diane struck him, it caused him to fall, resulting in the injured state in which Dr. Weissman had seen him.  With that information in hand, Dr. Weissman went in to speak to Diane and convince her that she had done nothing wrong.  By the time he came out again, the young man was dead.  Dr. Weissman suspected murder, but without any proof, he did nothing.

            On his next visit, he found an entirely new staff.  The senator explained that they had all quit, thinking Diane dangerous, and Dr. Weissman had naïvely accepted that explanation.  He hadn’t always seen how the young men died, but he had always noted the replacement of the staff after every new fiancé died or disappeared, though following the first death there was never more than one servant for the entire household.  He had known all along that every new ‘fiancé’ ended up dead, but the notion that the staff, too, might be meeting such grisly fates had never even occurred to him.  There was one point that Dr. Weissman stressed above all others, however:  “I do not believe that my patient ever killed anyone.  She caused many of them grievous injuries, whether intentionally or unintentionally, but never took a life.  If I had ever believed that Diane was responsible for the deaths, I would have intervened.”

            “That’s bullshit,” was Curt’s reaction to that claim.  “If he cared that people were getting killed, he wouldn’t have cared which one of them was doing the killing.”

            “I suppose his point is that he thinks he’s not responsible for what the senator does, but that he would be responsible for what Diane did,” Arthur said, shaking his head.  “But lettin’ murder go unreported is reprehensible either way, so I don’t see how he thinks he’s any better this way than the other.

            The press and the populace alike agreed with Curt and Arthur that Dr. Weissman was only digging his own hole deeper rather than making himself a path to escape, but the Merlots embraced his assertion that their daughter had no blood on her hands.  And most of the people seemed to agree with them, if for no other reason than that it was more pleasant if the pretty girl was a victim instead of a killer.  Though even Arthur preferred it that way, in truth.

            Opinions were more divided about Tommy Stone’s statements.  According to the news reports—particularly those coming out of Britain—Brian’s fans took the news fairly well.  Even if only in passing, he had finally given them a proper explanation of why he had done it.  Everyone could understand that drugs interfered with a man’s mind, and it wasn’t hard to make the connection that by ‘personal problems’ he had meant the break-up with Curt.  And who _wouldn’t_ temporarily lose his mind on breaking up with someone as incredible as Curt Wild?  The Brian Slade fans universally denounced Tommy Stone’s musical shite, but they were more or less willing to accept his story and apology.  The television news crews even interviewed people from Brian’s personal life, including the Venus in Furs and Mandy. (They had also left dozens of messages with Curt’s manager, trying to interview him, but he hadn’t told his manager that he was staying with Arthur while he was hospitalised, so he didn’t get the messages until it was too late.)  The band members claimed to be shocked by the whole thing—Arthur didn’t buy that they hadn’t ever made the connection between Brian and Tommy—and Mandy actually got choked up in talking about how she wished he had trusted her with the secret of how far some fans had gone in their grief.

            Tommy Stone’s fans were less sure how they felt about it.  Some of them were outraged that their conservative icon had once been a glittery, androgynous symbol of bisexual freedom.  Others didn’t really seem to care, and a few were positively gushing about how thrilling they found it to learn that their idol had such tragedy in his past.

            But none of that mattered anymore as soon as Arthur was discharged.  His leg was still in a cast, and would be for several more weeks, but he was fully healed otherwise, and filled with an almost adolescent excitement to be moving with his few belongings into Curt’s flat.  Curt had told him all about the place over the five days Arthur had been under observation, insisting that it wasn’t very big and wasn’t very interesting, but to Arthur it was enormous.  After all, he had spent years living in a flat barely bigger than a walk-in closet.  Though Curt had been right to say that it wasn’t particularly decorated, it _did_ have posters from various concerts he had attended over the years, and of course it had all of Curt’s guitars and gold records.

            More importantly, it had Curt himself.  Arthur didn’t need any more than that.

            Still, they had decided to take it slow.  Every time Curt had dived headfirst into a new relationship—like he had with Brian—he got in over his head, and ended up getting hurt.  So Arthur was officially living in the second bedroom; rather than sharing Curt’s bed every night, they were only going to sleep together after dates—or at least romantic nights in—to let them ease into being in a relationship.  They had spent enough time talking in hospital that they knew they could get along as friends, but that just made it all the more important not to overload what they had by going too quickly.

            Arthur didn’t have any doubts, though.  It felt right in a way that nothing else ever had.  It was all right that they were moving slowly, because he was sure it was going to last for the rest of their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone doesn't recognize it, the line Edwards is quoting was said by Beddoes in "Murder on the Orient Express". (Sir John Gielgud in the movie version.)
> 
> \------
> 
> Anyway, I hope the ending was happy enough to make up for the crap that preceded it. I'll post something more normal and less shit next time I post something. (I still have about nine or ten completed-yet-unposted fics in varying states of editing.) Assuming this festering hole hasn't killed the fandom, that is.


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